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From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: How to make a language downward-extensible?
Message-ID: <18813:Oct120:05:4990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 1 Oct 90 20:05:49 GMT
References: <29047:Sep2816:51:1290@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <7950@scolex.sco.COM> <STEPHEN.90Sep30235402@estragon.uchicago.edu>
Organization: IR
Lines: 13

In article <STEPHEN.90Sep30235402@estragon.uchicago.edu> stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu (Stephen P Spackman) writes:
> IMHO, the best way of making a language "downward-extensible" is not
> to touvch the language at all. Instead, you add to the compiler's
> transformation-strategy library (we're talking about a fairly radical
> compiler here) a note to the effect that this piece of code you want
> to go fast is equivalent to this other piece of code

I agree. I just think it's more flexible to put those transformations
into the code than to force a single transformation structure on all
future compilers and separate the efficient code from the code proper.
It's also possible to implement on today's compilers.

---Dan