HLA v1.103 under development

[Randall Hyde]

Now is the time to start requesting any features for HLA v1.103.
My main plan right now is to add support for the SSE/4 instruction set.
If anyone else has any suggestions or complaints, now is the time to start voicing them.
hLater,
Randy Hyde

[DarkWolf]

HLA BASIC - I realize that it is a BASIC interpreter but it would be nice to share the same or be a similar syntax to HLA. It also would be an interesting second educational tool. (one for compiling and now one for scripting languages).

64 bit - I have looking into this (I was asking for GAS docs in the 64bit board) it should be possible to compile 32 bit code on a 64 bit processor. (Set GAS using -64 switch and arch directive is .generic64 ) ld is the ?? The only 64 bit support I found in ld info pages is for powerPC64. I was going to try to 'break' this but ran into other unrelated issues with my only 64bit machine.

[Randall Hyde]

HLA BASIC - I realize that it is a BASIC interpreter but it would be nice to share the same or be a similar syntax to HLA. It also would be an interesting second educational tool. (one for compiling and now one for scripting languages).

The issue here is that HLA BASIC isn't really intended for HLA programmers -- it's intended for use by people who use applications written in HLA. The idea is to provide a simple language (that a lot of people already know) to allow application users to customize their apps.  Making a language that is HLA-syntax-compatible would tend to defeat that purpose.

That's not to say that having an HLA-syntax-like scripting language wouldn't be a cool idea, it's just not what HLA Basic is about. BTW, for someone who is interested, it wouldn't be so hard to modify HLA Basic to have a different syntax.

64 bit - I have looking into this (I was asking for GAS docs in the 64bit board) it should be possible to compile 32 bit code on a 64 bit processor. (Set GAS using -64 switch and arch directive is .generic64 ) ld is the ?? The only 64 bit support I found in ld info pages is for powerPC64. I was going to try to 'break' this but ran into other unrelated issues with my only 64bit machine.

You can, indeed, compile a 32-bit program to run in 64-bit mode. There is absolutely no benefit to do this (indeed, it will make the code larger in most cases). Almost all 64-bit OSes can run 32-bit programs, so there really is no reason to compile a 32-bit program into 64-bit code.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

[DarkWolf]

You can, indeed, compile a 32-bit program to run in 64-bit mode. There is absolutely no benefit to do this (indeed, it will make the code larger in most cases). Almost all 64-bit OSes can run 32-bit programs, so there really is no reason to compile a 32-bit program into 64-bit code.

The problem I ran into wasn't running a 32bit program it was compiling one. I can run HLA and other 32 bit programs but when I compile code GAS complains about the instructions. I think I am getting mixed up between GAS default configuration and 32bit code.

I was just trying to suggest 64 bit support in the standard library.