two co-existing projects

[Alaric B. Williams]

On 29 Apr 97 at 7:48, lispos@math.gatech.edu wrote:

> Gzipped Lisp source code is very compact.  I would suggest using it
> rather than byte codes if your interest is _merely_ in compact code.
> It would be nice to be able to update the VM over time, and not be
> locked into a bytecode that can never change.

My favourite approach is just to define a representation for Lisp lists
on disk in binary format. "source code" in ASCII form is just one way
of doing this. Another is to have a symbol table followed by a tagged
data dump, where atoms all have unique type tag byte values, and lists
are represented as the list type tag, the list length (32 bits enough
for everyone?), and then the corresponding set of subobjects.

Thus, it is the full s-expr, not some compiled form, but it's compact
and fast to load.


ABW
--
Alaric B. Williams (alaric@abwillms.demon.co.uk)

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