I'm writing an interpreter. I've done that before but never tried one which can work with expressions like 3 + 4 * 2 / ( 1 − 5 ) ^ 2 ^ 3
.
I'm not having a problem with the parsing process, actually it is about my VM which then executes the code.
My goal was a fast interpreter and so I decided not to use a stack-based VM where you would need more than one instruction for a multiplication, for example (push, push, mul)
The "assembly" code for the VM generated by the parser looks as following:
3 + 4 * 2 / ( 1 − 5 ) ^ 2 ^ 3
becomes
sub 1 5
pow result 2
pow result 3
div 2 result
mul 4 result
add 3 result
(The result is correct)
- As you can see: Every instruction takes no, one or two arguments. There is the result register which holds the result of the last instruction. And that's it.
Can a VM with a language of this structure and only one register calculate every mathematical expression for example Python or PHP can?
If it is not possible without a stack I'll start over right now!