From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id OAA07148 for caml-red; Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:05:41 +0100 (MET) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA03667 for ; Wed, 3 Jan 2001 15:40:36 +0100 (MET) Received: from nenuphar.saclay.cea.fr (nenuphar.saclay.cea.fr [132.166.192.7]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f03EeZb15542 for ; Wed, 3 Jan 2001 15:40:35 +0100 (MET) Received: from muguet.saclay.cea.fr (muguet.saclay.cea.fr [132.166.192.6]) by nenuphar.saclay.cea.fr (8.9.1a/8.9.1/CEAnet-relay-5.0.D20+Y2K) with ESMTP id PAA29266 for ; Wed, 3 Jan 2001 15:40:35 +0100 (MET) Received: from harpie.saclay.cea.fr (harpie.saclay.cea.fr [132.166.133.152]) by muguet.saclay.cea.fr (8.9.1a/8.9.1/CEAnet-relay-5.2.D20+Y2K) with ESMTP id PAA16150; Wed, 3 Jan 2001 15:40:34 +0100 (MET) Received: by harpie.saclay.cea.fr (8.8.8+Sun/CEANET.2.0.1) id PAA00824; Wed, 3 Jan 2001 15:40:32 +0100 (MET) From: STARYNKEVITCH Basile MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: <14931.14816.249732.816455@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 15:40:32 +0100 To: "Mattias Waldau" Cc: "OCAML" Subject: RE: JIT-compilation for OCaml? In-Reply-To: References: <20010102203051.A18481@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> X-Mailer: VM 6.76 under 21.1 (patch 12) "Channel Islands" XEmacs Lucid Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr >>>>> "Mattias" == Mattias Waldau writes: Mattias> If you just want portability, then why not generate Mattias> Java-byte code instead of Ocaml-bytecode. It is well known (e.g. see the Kawa implementation of Scheme on the JVM) that the Java Virtual Machine is not well suited for functional programming: function closures and tail-recursion calls (which are actually jump with arguments) do not exist in the JVM, and emulating them (e.g. closures as instances of specially generated classes) is quite inefficient. The JVM is not as universal as Sun's marketing hype claim it is... On the contrary the Ocaml virtual machine was (of course) designed for functional programming, and efficiently implement tails calls and closure constructions. Regards and Happy New Year to all, N.B. Any opinions expressed here are only mine, and not of my organization. N.B. Les opinions exprimees ici me sont personnelles et n engagent pas le CEA. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Basile STARYNKEVITCH ---- Commissariat à l Energie Atomique DTA/LETI/DEIN/SLA * CEA/Saclay b.528 (p111f) * 91191 GIF/YVETTE CEDEX * France phone: 1,69.08.60.55; fax: 1.69.08.83.95 home: 1,46.65.45.53 email: Basile point Starynkevitch at cea point fr web perso: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/starynkevitch/basile/