From: Michael Neumann <mneumann@...>
Date: 2003-11-17T07:11:19+09:00
Subject: [Rite] Byte-Code Compiler in Ruby

Hi,

I am fascinated by the many new ideas presented by matz for Rite.

Why not write the whole Ruby-to-Bytecode compiler in Ruby itself?

As the compilation step is executed less frequently, due to having lots
of precompiled bytecode binaries (one for each .rb file), this step is
not very time-critial (it's only done once for each file). And
applications using eval() are seldom evaluating very large parts of
code, or are itself time-critical.

This way, the Ruby-to-Bytecode compiler could be compiled itself into
bytecode, and then run on top of the Bytecode interpreter.

As one side-effect, the Bytecode interpreter would become relative easy
to implement. The compiler, too. And some other cool effects could be
done this way.

Is this "old" idea realistic for Rite? 

Regards,

  Michael