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SixtyPical/README.md
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SixtyPical
==========
SixtyPical is a very low-level programming language, similar to 6502 assembly,
with static analysis through abstract interpretation.
In practice, this means it catches things like
* you forgot to clear carry before adding something to the accumulator
* a subroutine that you call trashes a register you thought was preserved
* you tried to write the address of something that was not a routine, to
a jump vector
and suchlike. It also provides some convenient operations and abstractions
based on common machine-language programming idioms, such as
* copying values from one register to another (via a third register when
there are no underlying instructions that directly support it)
* explicit tail calls
* indirect subroutine calls
The reference implementation can execute, analyze, and compile SixtyPical
programs to 6502 machine code.
SixtyPical is a work in progress. The current released version of SixtyPical
is 0.10 (not released yet).
Documentation
-------------
* [Design Goals](doc/Design%20Goals.md)
* [SixtyPical specification](doc/SixtyPical.md)
* [SixtyPical revision history](HISTORY.md)
* [Literate test suite for SixtyPical syntax](tests/SixtyPical%20Syntax.md)
* [Literate test suite for SixtyPical execution](tests/SixtyPical%20Execution.md)
* [Literate test suite for SixtyPical analysis](tests/SixtyPical%20Analysis.md)
* [Literate test suite for SixtyPical compilation](tests/SixtyPical%20Compilation.md)
* [6502 Opcodes used/not used in SixtyPical](doc/6502%20Opcodes.md)
TODO
----
### Demo game
Finish the little demo "game" where you can move a block around the screen with
the joystick (i.e. bring it up to par with the original demo game that was written
for SixtyPical)
### `vector table` type
### `low` and `high` address operators
To turn `word` type into `byte`.
### Save registers on stack
This preserves them, so that, semantically, they can be used later even though they
are trashed inside the block.
### Range checking in the abstract interpretation
If you copy the address of a buffer (say it is size N) to a pointer, it is valid.
If you add a value from 0 to N-1 to the pointer, it is still valid.
But if you add a value ≥ N to it, it becomes invalid.
This should be tracked in the abstract interpretation.
(If only because abstract interpretation is the major point of this project!)
### And at some point...
* Compare word (constant or memory location) with memory location or pointer. (Maybe?)
* `copy x, [ptr] + y`
* Maybe even `copy [ptra] + y, [ptrb] + y`, which can be compiled to indirect LDA then indirect STA!
* Check that the buffer being read or written to through pointer, appears in approporiate inputs or outputs set.
* `byte table` and `word table` of sizes other than 256
* initialized `byte table` memory locations
* always analyze before executing or compiling, unless told not to
* `trash` instruction.
* `interrupt` routines -- to indicate that "the supervisor" has stored values on the stack, so we can trash them.
* error messages that include the line number of the source code
* have `copy` instruction able to copy a byte to a user-def mem loc, etc.
* add absolute addressing in shl/shr, absolute-indexed for add, sub, etc.
* check and disallow recursion.
* automatic tail-call optimization (could be tricky, w/constraints?)
* re-order routines and optimize tail-calls to fallthroughs