Doug Rogers wrote: [...] > I work in the embedded arena, too, so I can sympathize with Ralph > Hempel's gripe about RAM. The issue definitely comes up. But I'd still > prefer the benefits of a simpler code base to those of constant folding. As a compromise, it may be sensible to have a basic, working-and-reliable compiler in the actual *engine*, and then to have a separate Lua-to-Lua processor that takes off-line code and produces optimised code suitable for deployment. (Or byte-code. It doesn't matter which.) If you could add syntax for 'compiler hints' --- i.e., something that's ignored by the on-line compiler --- it would allow you to annotate your code in a way that the off-line compiler would recognise. For example (making up syntax out of a hat): local $const$ CONSTVAL = 4 The off-line compiler would see that I'd marked that as a constant, and would not only produce error messages if I tried to write to it, but would use constant folding to compile CONSTVAL+1 into a literal instead of an expression. The on-line compiler would ignore the $const$ completely and produce a normal local variable. One of the reasons I bring this up is that this week I've been writing simple games. (I'm vaguely planning to write up 'How to write a game in Lua in three days' article --- if you're at 3GSM, drop round the Tao buses and ask to see Binet.) These are intended for deployment on phones. I'd really like an efficient optimising compiler; but I don't really want to have to ship the --- big --- optimising compiler with each game. I'm aware I can use luac, but that uses the on-line compiler which isn't that great. A decent off-line compiler would really help me. -- ┌── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─── http://www.cowlark.com ─────────────────── │ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my │ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to │ use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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