Compiler design using object technology with cross platform capability

摘要

A programming language environment that includes an object compiler and associated object execution engine. The object compiler parses and converts source code into object-oriented, compiled code that is platform independent and that can be executed by the object execution engine at speeds close to that of a true compiled binary executable. The compiler parses the statements of source code and converts each statement into one or more pre-defined, persistent instruction objects. Then, it orders the instruction objects, generating a sequence of instruction objects that are stored as a platform-independent file. The instruction objects each have a virtual initialize method, a virtual execute method, and an index indicative of the next instruction object in the sequence. Data used in the statements can be represented as persistent data objects and the instruction objects and data objects can be stored in separate stacks (i.e., as linked lists), with their indices indicating their position within the stack. The memory address of each instruction object and data object is allocated dynamically at run time, with the initialize method being used to convert each index to a pointer that identifies the memory address of the next object in the stack. The execute method executes at least one machine language instruction and returns a pointer to the next instruction object. Thus, the object execution engine executes the sequence of instruction objects by calling the execute method of each instruction object and using the returned pointer to access the next instruction object.