From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2006-07-27T10:22:39+09:00
Subject: Re: For performance, write it in C

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 09:14:49AM +0900, Thomas E Enebo wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jul 2006, Chad Perrin defenestrated me:
> > 
> > There is no intermediate bytecode step for Perl, as far as I'm aware.
> > It's not a question I've directly asked one of the Perl internals
> > maintainers, but everything I know about the Perl compiler confirms my
> > belief that it simply does compilation to machine code.
> 
>   I have not been on the perl train for years, but I believe for Perl5
> at least this is not true.  I remember Malcolm Beatties B module which
> basically exposed the intermediate bytecodes that perl normally interprets.
> That was some time ago and things may have changed?
> 
>   Here is some documentation on this (it could be old but it seems to
> match my memory):
> 
> http://www.faqs.org/docs/perl5int/c163.html
> 
>   So it looks like Perl is somewhat similiar to Java (perhaps the other
> way around since Perl's interpreter pre-dates Java).  An analogy of the
> difference would be that Perl is CISC and Java is RISC since Perl bytecode
> is higher level.  Maybe they JIT pieces?

I believe you are correct, with regard to an intermediate code step,
after all.  I've done some research on it to refresh my memory.  Whether
it continues to compile to a machine-readable executable or interprets
the intermediate code form is something I haven't been able to nail down
yet.  I'll keep looking.  Apparently, I was wrong somewhere along the
way.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"The measure on a man's real character is what he would do
if he knew he would never be found out." - Thomas McCauley