[Vm-dev] Fwd: MiscPrimitive plugin: plan for next 6 months, please read

Eliot Miranda eliot.miranda at gmail.com
Sun Dec 31 00:19:35 UTC 2017


On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 5:35 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
wrote:

>
> On Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 10:49 PM, Levente Uzonyi <leves at caesar.elte.hu>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Fri, 22 Dec 2017, Clément Bera wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>>
>>
>> snip
>>
>> 1. translate: aString from: start  to: stop  table: table
>>>
>>> This primitive seems to be unused. I suggest we move it from a primitive
>>>
>> to plain Smalltalk code.
>>
>> That primitive is currently used to convert ByteStrings to lower and
>> upper case, and it's also used to convert between cr and lf line endings.
>> The primitive fails in Pharo for some reason, but it's still used in the
>> 6.0 image I have.
>> It works properly in Squeak and Cuis.
>>
>
> ​Indeed.
>
> Also, the primitive is a lot faster for non-jit VMs. E.g. the Stack
> interpreter for iOS, where no JIT compiler is allowed.
>
> We should keep those primitives, in some form.
>

I agree.


> One idea would be to rewrite MiscPrimitivePlugin as a plain plugin, and
> only keep the few primitives that are not moved elsewhere.
>

I like this.  It shouldn't be hard.  The parse trees from the translated
primitives are good starting points.  I take Clément's point that these are
optional primitives but don't like the idea of a significant performance
regression. And if MiscPrimitivePlugin is external then there's no overhead
for the VM itself.

- Bert -​
>

_,,,^..^,,,_
best, Eliot
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