Devlog 35 Compiling Words Pt2
January 06
Log 35
In this session, I actually plan on fixing compilation and getting to DONE!
Compiling words pt2
I decided to step through the execution of a compiled word: dup using GDB.
The first problem I noticed was the indirect jump to docol in COLON was not working. In fact, it doesn’t need any indirection since we’re actually jumping straight to it. Let’s fix that:
- la a2, .addr # load the codeword address into Y working register
+ la a2, docol # load the codeword address into Y working register
And then we can get rid of .addr:
-.addr: .word docol # indirect jump to docol from a colon definition
Next issue was in docol, we don’t expect the code field address in Y, that makes no sense. We expect it in W, like in every other Forth:
- addi s1, a2, CELL # skip code field in Y by adding a CELL, store it in IP
+ addi s1, a0, CELL # skip code field in W by adding 1 CELL, store it in IP
Finally, the macro defcode for defining a word was completely wacky. It had a mix of code from sectorforth and jonesforth and some weirdness added by me because I store a hash of the word instead of the length+name. In any case, I had to rewrite the entire macro and I ended up with this:
.macro defcode name, hash, label, link
.section .rodata
.balign CELL # align to CELL bytes boundary
.globl word_\label
word_\label :
.4byte word_\link # 32-bit pointer to codeword of link
.globl hash_\label
hash_\label :
.4byte \hash # 32-bit hash of this word
.4byte code_\label # 32-bit pointer to codeword of label
.globl code_\label
code_\label : # assembly code below
.endm
This is a bit better. The codefield now points to hash_\label+4, which will move directly to the code_\label. I think that adds an extra cycle and would rather have the code jump to code_\label, but when I do that the interpreter crashes… I guess I’ll need to fix that another time.
For the time being, let’s test out our dup once more in the terminal:
: dup sp@ @ ;<Enter> ok
And let’s inspect the 6 values in GDB:
(gdb) x/6xw 0x20000000
0x20000000: 0x080004d0 0x03886bce 0x080004c0 0x080002b4
0x20000010: 0x0800027c 0x08000344
The first 2 are the link to the previous word and the hash.. unchanged since the previous devlog:
(gdb) x/xw 0x080004c0
0x80004c0 <docol>: 0xfe992e23
(gdb) x/xw 0x080002b4
0x80002b4 <hash_DSPFETCH+4>: 0x080002b8
(gdb) x/xw 0x0800027c
0x800027c <hash_FETCH+4>: 0x08000280
(gdb) x/xw 0x08000344
0x8000344 <code_EXIT>: 0x00092483
Perfect!! (almost).
If I gather up the courage to fix the issue I mentioned above, it would look like docol, code_DSPFETCH, code_FETCH, code_EXIT. Now let’s try running dup in the terminal:
123 dup<Enter> ok
This should leave 123 as the first two entries in the stack. Let’s check the stack with GDB:
(gdb) i r sp
sp 0x20004ff8 0x20004ff8
(gdb) x/dw 0x20004ff8
0x20004ff8: 123
(gdb) x/dw 0x20004ff8+4
0x20004ffc: 123
Great!
Now we have confirmation that we can execute AND compile words!!
Done
And there we have it, my first fully functional Forth (and programming language written from scratch).
Closing thoughts
This is super exciting! There are still a few minor bugs to fix and features to add, but I’ll focus on bugs/optimizations first, code cleanup and comments, and maybe getting some examples and a README up for others to use this.