[kaffe] kaffe.def

[Dalibor Topic]

Pinaki Mukherjee wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> How does the kaffe.def file (in .../kaffe/kaffevm/) work? I understand 
> that it is basically meant for the 'switch' statement cases for the 
> different instructions, but want to know how the syntax is defined. Are 
> .def files part of the C language definition?

Short explanantion: It's all legal C, but what you're seeing is being 
preprocessed into something else ;)

Long explanation: The def files are a mechanism that's been used back in 
gcc, probably earlier, afaik. The idea is to define the semantics of 
(bytecode) execution using an intermediate language, icode in kaffe's case.

Icode is a convenient instrustion set to move things around, perform 
arithmetic, check stack properties, etc. See
http://wiki.cs.uiuc.edu/cs427/Kaffe+-+Class+Execution for details of how 
it all fits together.

cheers,
dalibor topic