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Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com> writes: > Chris Hanson (one of the RnRS authors, and one of the MIT Scheme guys) > has volunteered to write a bytecode compiler/interpreter for Guile, as > well as a front end for the debugger. That should improve performance > some, and give us low-overhead debugging as well. It was my understanding that scm was originally chosen as a basis for guile because it was fast. So fast, in particular, that it was faster than all byte code interpreters. In fact, I recall lots of guile discussions otf: A: Let's add a byte code compiler to guile to speed it up. B: A pointless project - scm is faster than all known byte code interpreters. It'd be pretty ironic if the one deciding factor for choosing scm has been lost in general guile development to such an extent that a byte code compiler is now needed. > This should also reduce the GC overhead, by placing most variable > bindings on a stack, rather than in the heap. How is this the case? The stack still has to be scanned to see what it points to in the heap. -- Harvey J. Stein BFM Financial Research hjstein@bfr.co.il