| ANN: HXA V0.12 [message #125486] |
Mon, 22 August 2005 00:11  |
Anton Treuenfels
Messages: 105
Registered: December 2011
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Third version of the HXA cross-assembler:
www.home.earthlink.net/~hxa
Fixed a couple of bugs. Added true (if rudimentary) segmented source
code, ability to output Intel hexadecimal object files and a couple of
other minor things. Couple of new proof-of-concept demos show complete
8080/85 and Z80 instruction sets implemented as macros.
- Anton Treuenfels
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| Re: ANN: HXA V0.12 [message #125849 is a reply to message #125486] |
Tue, 23 August 2005 12:58  |
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Originally posted by: josephoswaldgg@hotmail.com
Anton Treuenfels wrote:
> Third version of the HXA cross-assembler:
>
> www.home.earthlink.net/~hxa
>
> Fixed a couple of bugs. Added true (if rudimentary) segmented source
> code, ability to output Intel hexadecimal object files and a couple of
> other minor things. Couple of new proof-of-concept demos show complete
> 8080/85 and Z80 instruction sets implemented as macros.
>
> - Anton Treuenfels
Any chance this could get ported to a non-proprietary and still
available AWK or Perl implementation?
What obstacles do you see in such a port?
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| Re: ANN: HXA V0.12 [message #125906 is a reply to message #125849] |
Tue, 23 August 2005 21:30 |
Anton Treuenfels
Messages: 105
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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"josephoswaldgg@hotmail.com" <josephoswald@gmail.com> wrote in message
> Any chance this could get ported to a non-proprietary and still
> available AWK or Perl implementation?
>
> What obstacles do you see in such a port?
If the question is "Can an assembler be written in another dialect of AWK?"
the answer is yes. "The AWK Programming Language" by the original AWK
creators includes a simple assembler as one of its examples (a very clear
example, too!). "Amazing AWK Assembler" by Henry Spencer is still floating
around out there, although it is sometimes cited as an example of how *not*
to do things (I've looked at it but can't really understand it).
If the question is "Can HXA be ported to another version of AWK?" the answer
is...maybe. Probably not directly. TAWK has a number of very useful
extensions that simply don't exist in versions such as gAWK. Among them:
1) TAWK is compiled, not interpreted (very quickly, I might add). Not in
itself a deal-breaker, but any other version would likely run much more
slowly.
2) TAWK's user-defined functions are much closer to the way functions work
in most major languages. The kludge used for "local" variables in most AWKs
(ie., defining extra arguments in the parameter list and then not
initializing them when calling the function) is completely unnecessary in
TAWK. I suppose most functions could be re-written in this style, perhaps
along with a few global variables used exclusively for loop indices and
such.
3) TAWK has true multi-dimensional arrays, rather than the concatenated
indices "kludge" of other AWKs. This is tougher to get around, as HXA uses
multi-dimensional arrays quite often and nearly as often is interested in
the value of the second or later index independently of the previous
indices. A port might be better of trying to implement "equivlant
functionality" rather than attempting to duplicate the TAWK functionality
directly.
4) TAWK array indices are by default sorted in increasing order (a property
this version of HXA relies on even more heavily than previous versions),
while other AWKs make no order guarantee (the current maintainer of gAWK has
been known to wonder how Pat Thompson did it). Many times when HXA uses this
property to visit array elements in order the indices are numeric, and so
these could often be changed to FOR loops. But sometimes even if they are
numeric there are large gaps (on the order of 2^20 or more) between
consecutive index values, so it could take a while for this kind of loop to
complete.
In sum, to port to another version of AWK it might be easiest to try to
figure out what the purpose of anything HXA does is, and if it uses some
special feature of TAWK to accomplish it, try to figure out how to provide
equivalent functionality in that version of AWK.
Me, when I think about porting to a different language I usually consider
what I could do with C and a good regular expression library :). I'd also
probably make a lot of use of structures, which don't exist in TAWK (I fake
them sometimes with those multi-dimensional arrays).
I'd very much miss the automatic memory management of all the AWK variants,
though.
I probably wouldn't make a lot of changes to the overall design of HXA. I'd
do the "equivalent functionality" thing.
With any luck it's modularized heavily enough that that shouldn't be too
exceeding difficult (just match the function inputs and outputs and
internally do whatever).
- Anton Treuenfels
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| Re: ANN: HXA V0.12 [message #125989 is a reply to message #125942] |
Wed, 24 August 2005 23:53 |
Anton Treuenfels
Messages: 105
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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"Andy McFadden" <fadden@fadden.com> wrote in message
news:LuUOe.10377$p%3.39738@typhoon.sonic.net...
> In comp.sys.apple2.programmer Anton Treuenfels <atreuenfels@earthlink.net>
wrote:
>> Me, when I think about porting to a different language I usually
consider
>> what I could do with C and a good regular expression library :). I'd
also
>> probably make a lot of use of structures, which don't exist in TAWK (I
fake
>> them sometimes with those multi-dimensional arrays).
>> I'd very much miss the automatic memory management of all the AWK
variants,
>> though.
>
> Have you looked at Python?
Can't say that I have. I don't know much about Python or Perl or Ruby. When
I came across an old (really old) version of gAWK I thought "Here is
something I could really use! - if it wasn't so broken!".
When I found TAWK I thought "This has everything I thought was missing!". So
now if the problem looks like a text file the solution looks like TAWK to me
:) Well worth every penny I paid for it - I just wish I'd upgraded when I
had the chance.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I don't have any immediate plans
myself to convert HXA to another language. If anyone wants to do that
themselves, well, the sources are there and it's GPL'd - have at it!.
If someone is just interested in adding a new processor and is willing to
write the single replacement module that would be needed (plus the necessary
test files showing that it handles correct/incorrect input and the
documentation, of course), I'd be willing to compile it and add it to the
download.
- Anton Treuenfels
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