compiled or not?

[cyrille de brébisson]

Hello,

PPL text is transformed into an evaluation tree which represents the original code but is much faster to execute/access.

Variables are kept as text and looked up when needed. One of the reason for this is that, since PPL is, at least partially a symbolic language (you can create an equation and pass it around, with QUOTE for example), what might look like a local (for example), might actually be a global when executed.

Also, PPL has WAY more type of variables that C or C++, and has the ability to modify its own variables (to some extend).
(variables types are: home build in, home user, app build in, app users, app exported program, exported program, current program global, local, CAS)...

At this point, variables are not sorted. This is, to some extend, under the assumption that each program block is 'small'. ie, that each list of variable is small. Local variable, for example, one 'list' of local variable gets created when a user function is called, and each time the LOCAL keyword is used. Since LOCAL can only create 8 variables at the same time, this limits the use of a sort search.

It is true that I could at least sort the symbols in programs. It would indeed help for program global variables and program function search.

Quite frankly, I never dreamed that people would create program that large and complex with this little language and therefore never thought of such issues!

Cyrille