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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Unimportant, non-IF related Inform question :)
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Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 05:35:14 GMT
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Admiral Jota (jota@laraby.tiac.net) wrote:
> Would it be possible to write an Inform compiler in Inform? 
> (I'm not asking for the details; I'm just curious if it's possible)
> (Well, if you want to post the details, feel free...)

I'd think it would be possible. There are opcodes to read from an 
arbitrary file to memory, and write; everything else is C code.

The problem is memory. The Z-machine has only 64K of RAM (strings and
executable code are stored in non-writable memory.) According to the
manual, a typical game with the standard library requires Inform to
allocate about 250K. 

So you could probably port the compiler, but you would only be able to 
compile Robots and Freefall. :-)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
