virtual machine

[Fare Rideau]

> The CMUCL bytecode file format is endian-dependent,
> there's .lbytef for little-endian and .bytef.
>
Is there more to it than just swapping bytes as the files are read,
perhaps skipping strings/symbols?
If not, perhaps a minor change in bytecode file format can make it possible?
After all, swapping bytes can be considered a free
operation wrt the time needed to fetch the files from disk/network,
all the more when some people are considering postprocessing the
bytecode with JITs and the like...

Even a complete newbie like I could jump in and add byteswap support
to the linux ufs driver, so that a Linux PC could equally read either-endian
(i386-FreeBSD and Sparc-Sun) partitions; that's *trivial*!
Just make it easy to quickly identify the endianness of your code...

Anyway, ===> FOLLOWUP-TO: lispvm@math.gatech.edu <===

== Fare' -- rideau@ens.fr -- Franc,ois-Rene' Rideau -- DDa(.ng-Vu~ Ba^n ==
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