I have a whole slew of compiler-side feature requests involving static pointers, constants, and labels (which I will henceforth collectively refer to as defines). I figure since Axe is nearing 1.0.0, compiler-side feature additions would be a decent priority. I will order them in what I believe would approximately be increasing difficulty to implement, which also happens to be increasing awesomeness.
EDIT: I just want to mention that I don't really
need any of these features, so don't feel like you have to add all or even any of them. Although out of all of them, I would probably most like the third one.
First, could the parsing of defines be modified to accept lowercase letters?
Second, could static pointers and constants not require the first token to be a GDB, Pic, or Str token? I see this as being most easily implemented by allowing define references to be prefixed with an easily accessible token like
i, which would dictate that what follows is a define and not a variable. Some sample code of old and new static pointers coexisting:
"appvTILEMAP"→iAPV
"Not enough RAM!"→Str0E
!If GetCalc(iAPV,4096)→M
Disp Str0E
getKeyʳ
Return
End
Third, in addition to user-defined constants, could there be user-defined variables? I realize this can sort of be emulated with code like
{GDB0}r, but that wouldn't qualify for variable optimizations and would be a pain to type every time you wanted to use it. The easiest way I see this being done is by chaining it with the above suggestion. You would define them as a constant but would reference them with a prefix like
var (the
u token) or
?. It would even have built-in de-referencing! Some sample code:
"appvTILEMAP"→iAPV
"Not enough RAM!"→Str0E
L₂→iMAP
!If GetCalc(iAPV,4096)→varMAP
Disp Str0E
getKeyʳ
Return
End
Fourth, could unused tokens be turned into defines? When the initialization statement is reached, the token would be checked to confirm that it's not already a command or a define. It would then be added to the list of defines with the first "name" byte being an identifier that it is a token, something like 0. Then, when a reference to the token is reached and it does not match any commands, check the define array. I can also imagine an extension to this that would allow r modifiers to be tagged onto the token, setting flag bits in the first "name" byte. Instead of checking that the first "name" byte is 0 during parsing, you would check that the high six bits are 0.
Finally, this feature request would probably require some overhauling of the parser, but it would be incredible:
using an extra RAM page while compiling on calculators that have one. With this, you could lift the static pointer and nested conditional limits to near-unreachable levels. You could even increase the maximum length of static pointers to a much more comfortable length like 8 characters and still have more than 10 times the number of available pointers than there are currently.
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