compiled or not?

[ji3m]

I dont know the innards of the ppl implementation, but it seems to me that in the single pass an entry for all fumctions and variables within the single file exist in a symbol table. That table could have a link to the final address of code or data object at the end of the single pass.

The index into that table saved in the code object should remove the need for a runtime search. Only true extermals would require name searches. Access time would then be constant within that (presumably large) file.

Even now I measure acess times of less than 50 microseconds in a tiny program vs 1 or more millsecs in a large program.