CONTENTS

• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
• OPTIONS
• EXAMPLES
• BUGS
• AUTHORS

#NAME

B::Bytecode - Perl compiler's bytecode backend

#SYNOPSIS

perl -MO=Bytecode[,OPTIONS] foo.pl

#DESCRIPTION

This compiler backend takes Perl source and generates a platform-independent bytecode encapsulating code to load the internal structures perl uses to run your program. When the generated bytecode is loaded in, your program is ready to run, reducing the time which perl would have taken to load and parse your program into its internal semi-compiled form. That means that compiling with this backend will not help improve the runtime execution speed of your program but may improve the start-up time. Depending on the environment in which your program runs this may or may not be a help.

The resulting bytecode can be run with a special byteperl executable or (for non-main programs) be loaded via the byteload_fh function in the B module.

#OPTIONS

If there are any non-option arguments, they are taken to be names of objects to be saved (probably doesn't work properly yet). Without extra arguments, it saves the main program.

#-ofilename

Output to filename instead of STDOUT.

#-afilename

Append output to filename.

#--

Force end of options.

#-f

Force optimisations on or off one at a time. Each can be preceded by no- to turn the option off (e.g. -fno-compress-nullops).

#-fcompress-nullops

Only fills in the necessary fields of ops which have been optimised away by perl's internal compiler.

#-fomit-sequence-numbers

Leaves out code to fill in the op_seq field of all ops which is only used by perl's internal compiler.

#-fbypass-nullops

If op->op_next ever points to a NULLOP, replaces the op_next field with the first non-NULLOP in the path of execution.

#-On

Optimisation level (n = 0, 1, 2, ...). -O means -O1. -O1 sets -fcompress-nullops -fomit-sequence numbers. -O2 adds -fbypass-nullops.

#-D

Debug options (concatenated or separate flags like perl -D).

#-Do

Prints each OP as it's processed.

#-Db

Print debugging information about bytecompiler progress.

#-Da

Tells the (bytecode) assembler to include source assembler lines in its output as bytecode comments.

#-DC

Prints each CV taken from the final symbol tree walk.

#-S

Output (bytecode) assembler source rather than piping it through the assembler and outputting bytecode.

#-upackage

Stores package in the output.

#EXAMPLES

perl -MO=Bytecode,-O6,-ofoo.plc,-umain foo.pl

perl -MO=Bytecode,-S,-umain foo.pl > foo.S
assemble foo.S > foo.plc

Note that assemble lives in the B subdirectory of your perl library directory. The utility called perlcc may also be used to help make use of this compiler.

perl -MO=Bytecode,-uFoo,-oFoo.pmc Foo.pm

#BUGS

Output is still huge and there are still occasional crashes during either compilation or ByteLoading. Current status: experimental.

#AUTHORS

Malcolm Beattie, mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk Benjamin Stuhl, sho_pi@hotmail.com

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