Almost OT: How can that be? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

15 Jan 1999

...
 > Oh, and when I called it an
"interpreter," that's a misnomer. It may look,
...
 > walk, talk, and smell like an interpreter, but
it's actually a JIT compiler
...
 > in disguise... that's why it's so darned
fast in comparison to an interpreter.
...

   Actually, it compiles to an internal byte code that can be interpreted
 faster than parsing text, much like Forth or even Java. In my experience, very few
interpreters actually parse text in real time.
Every BASIC I've used AFAIK reduces keywords to byte codes at the time of
entry, and some actually encode numbers etc. at the same time.

Notable exception:  I think REXX parses text in real time, or did when I
used it under VM/CMS.

Philip.