Forth like interpreter

[Christian Tismer]

Greg Ewing wrote:
> 
> Christian Tismer wrote:
> >
> > The real "overhead" is the check on default (cmp eax, 140)
> 
> In principle, this check could be eliminated by making the
> jump table have a full 256 entries and filling the unused
> ones with pointers to the default branch.

You bet, I tried everything I could think of to convince
this dummy that there is no need for checking. Casted
forth to byte and back... nothing but extra operations
were introduced, and then the check was inserted. VC++
seems to have one single pattern for how to do that.

Dead end, since I shouldn't use the "A"-word on c.l.p. :-)

> Whether any C compiler could be persuaded to do this I don't
> know. What about writing the switch statement with explicit
> cases for all the unused opcodes? Seems like it should work,
> unless the compiler is trying to be just *too* smart...

Tried it. VC++ doesn't use my hints. No effect but an increased
jump index table.

ciao - chris

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