A practical solution for scripting language compilers

Although scripting languages are becoming increasingly popular, even mature scripting language implementations remain interpreted. Several compilers and reimplementations have been attempted, generally focusing on performance. Based on our survey of these reimplementations, we determine that there are three important features of scripting languages that are difficult to compile or reimplement. Since scripting languages are defined primarily through the semantics of their original implementations, they often change semantics between releases. They provide large standard libraries, which are difficult to re-use, and costly to reimplement. They provide C APIs, used both for foreignfunction-interfaces and to write third-party extensions. These APIs typically have tight integration with the original implementation. Finally, they support run-time code generation. These features make the important goal of correctness difficult to achieve. We present a technique to support these features ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: SAC
• Authors: Paul Biggar, Edsko de Vries, David Gregg
• Keywords: Applied Computing, Mature Scripting Language, Original Implementation, SAC 2009, Scripting Language