Abstract
The portability and runtime safety of programs which are executed on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) makes the JVM an attractive target for compilers of languages other than Java. Unfortunately, the JVM was designed with language Java in mind, and lacks many of the primitives required for a straighforward implementation of other languages.
Here, we discuss how the JVM may be used to implement other object-oriented languages. As a practical example of the possibilities, we report on a comprehensive case study.
The open source Gardens Point Component Pascal compiler compiles the entire Component Pascal language, a dialect of Oberon-2, to JVM bytecodes. This compiler achieves runtime efficiencies which are comparable to native-code implementations of procedural languages.
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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Gough, K.J., Corney, D. (2000). Evaluating the Java Virtual Machine as a Target for Languages Other Than Java. In: Weck, W., Gutknecht, J. (eds) Modular Programming Languages. JMLC 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1897. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/10722581_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/10722581_22
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-67958-5
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