62 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
62 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE T3X LANGUAGE
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T3X is a tiny block-structured language that you probably
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haven't heard about. It had a tiny community back in the
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mid-1990's. Software written in T3X includes its own compiler
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(of course), its own text-based IDE, a few LISP interpreters,
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an assembler and linker for the 8086, and a database system
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used by a local church community. It was also used in a few
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college courses, most probably because its community was so
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tiny that nobody could be bothered to do your homework
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assignments for you.
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The T3X language started as a very minimalistic language
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with a single-file compiler that targeted the 8086 and 386
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processors. It supported FreeBSD via the GNU binutils and
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emitted DOS EXE files through its own assembler and linker.
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In its lifetime, several enhancements were made to both the
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language and its implementation:
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- An object system was added to the language, and the entire
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runtime support infrastructure was rewritten as a set of
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classes.
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- Tcode, an abstract target language, was added. It could be
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interpreted, optimized, linked, and converted to native
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code.
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- A back-end for the AXP 21064 (Alpha) was added.
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- A C back-end was added, allowing to use T3X on otherwise
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unsupported processors.
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- Runtime support for the following platforms was added:
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NetBSD-386, NetBSD-Alpha, FreeBSD-386, Coherent-386,
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Linux-386, and Plan 9 (via C).
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T3X is probably notable, because it is a typeless object
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oriented language. Objects are distinguished by the methods
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they implement, and the methods are typeless procedures.
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The T3X object system is more similar to ADA packages than
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to the C++ or Java approach. It implements reusable modules
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rather than data types.
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T3X-8.1.7 was the last version of T3X and it was released in
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2004 with some minor updates in 2011 and 2014. Its generic
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(Tcode) port still runs on modern operating systems.
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T3X9 is a subset of the T3X language that compiles directly
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from T3X to ELF-FreeBSD-386.
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If you are familiar with T3X, this is what the compiler omits
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from the original language: modules, objects, classes, packed
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vectors, function pointers and indirect function calls, meta
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commands, unsigned operators. Also, constant expression syntax
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is only a subset.
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The T3X9 compiler is under 1600 lines in size and compiles
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itself from source to ELF in about 0.06 seconds on a 750MHz
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notebook computer. The resulting binary has a size of less
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than 32K bytes. The T3X9r2 compiler has a slightly larger
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size (about 33K bytes) and additional language constructs
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(packed tables, hex literal prefixes) and runtime functions.
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