compilers@ima.UUCP (01/08/86)
[from ] Has anybody seen the paper on "data descriptors" by Holt and Cordy? It comes with the distribution tape for Concurrent Euclid (from the University of Toronto). I don't know offhand if it's been published in any other form. It describes a uniform internal representation for data objects (eg. constants, variables, records, addresses, etc). Since the representation is uniform, it makes life a lot simpler and makes all sorts of optimizations managable. For example, the Concurrent Euclid compiler (which uses data descriptors) can easily detect when the target of an assignment appears in the right hand side and emit better code in such cases. From what little I've read about Graham-Glanville code generation, I'd swear that it would benefit by incorporating data descriptors into it's grammars. Paul Tarvydas {ihnp4,etc.}!utcsri!tarvydas