Re: Avoid treating the stack as an array [Re: "Back & Forth" is back!]

On 15 Sep 2024 at 23:45:22 CEST, "Paul Rubin" <no.email@nospam.invalid> wrote:

Stephen Pelc <stephen@vfxforth.com> writes:

I would not make that trade off today.
So there's only one Stephen Pelc but two application domains.

 
I wonder how much effort de-localizing the TCP/IP stack took, compared
to hypothetically updating the compiler to optimize locals more.  If the
TCP/IP stack code can compile with iForth or lxf, is there a way to
compare the code size with VFX's?  I can understand wanting to use VFX
for actual delivery, of course.

On modern desktop CPUs, I would probably spend the effort on
optimising locals more. However, the ability to provide the address
of a local is essential in our world. I have not inspected our code
base to see how many uses of a local declaration of a buffer
: bah   {: ... | FOO[ cell ] ... -- :}
there are compared to the use of the ADDR (address) operator
applied to a normally defined local
: bah   {: ... |   FOO ... -- :}
...
  addr FOO

Local buffers are remarkably useful.


--
Stephen Pelc, stephen@vfxforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering, Ltd. - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)78 0390 3612,  +34 649 662 974
http://www.mpeforth.com
   MPE website
http://www.vfxforth.com/downloads/VfxCommunity/
   downloads