[Python-Dev] Rattlesnake progress

[Skip Montanaro]

    Tim> Excellent advice that almost nobody follows <0.5 wink>: choose a
    Tim> flexible intermediate representation, then structure all your
    Tim> transformations as independent passes, such that the output of
    Tim> every pass is acceptable as the input to every pass.  

I did this with my peephole optimizer.  It worked great.  Each peephole
optimization is a very simple subclass of an OptimizeFilter base class.  The
IR is essentially the bytecode split into basic blocks, with each basic
block a list of (opcode argument) tuples.  Jump targets are represented as
simple indexes into the block list.  (In fact, my Rattlesnake converter was
just a "peephole optimizer" named InstructionSetConverter.)  As Tim
mentioned about KISS, this means you sometimes have to run particular
optimizations or groups of optimizations multiple times.

I want to get it checked into the sandbox where others can play with it, but
time has shifted its foundation a tad and a couple optimizations don't work
any longer.

Skip