RE: Stacks, registers, and bytecode. (Oh, my!)

[Dan Sugalski]

At 02:15 PM 5/29/2001 -0700, Hong Zhang wrote:
> > we have a simple set of load literal, push/pop (multiple) registers op
> > codes.
>
>There should be no push/pop opcodes. They are simply register moves.

The one handy thing about push and pop is you don't need to go tracking the 
stack manually--that's taken care of by the push and pop opcodes. They can 
certainly be replaced with manipulations of a temp register and indirect 
register stores or loads, but that's more expensive--you do the same thing 
only with more dispatch overhead.

And I'm considering the stack as a place to put registers temporarily when 
the compiler runs out and needs a spot to squirrel something away, rather 
than as a mechanism to pass parameters to subs or opcodes. This is a stack 
in the traditional scratch-space sense.

                                        Dan

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