Previous to this patch each time a bytes object was referenced a new
instance (with the same data) was created. With this patch a single
bytes object is created in the compiler and is loaded directly at execute
time as a true constant (similar to loading bignum and float objects).
This saves on allocating RAM and means that bytes objects can now be
used when the memory manager is locked (eg in interrupts).
The MP_BC_LOAD_CONST_BYTES bytecode was removed as part of this.
Generated bytecode is slightly larger due to storing a pointer to the
bytes object instead of the qstr identifier.
Code size is reduced by about 60 bytes on Thumb2 architectures.
Hashing is now done using mp_unary_op function with MP_UNARY_OP_HASH as
the operator argument. Hashing for int, str and bytes still go via
fast-path in mp_unary_op since they are the most common objects which
need to be hashed.
This lead to quite a bit of code cleanup, and should be more efficient
if anything. It saves 176 bytes code space on Thumb2, and 360 bytes on
x86.
The only loss is that the error message "unhashable type" is now the
more generic "unsupported type for __hash__".
Previous to this patch, a big-int, float or imag constant was interned
(made into a qstr) and then parsed at runtime to create an object each
time it was needed. This is wasteful in RAM and not efficient. Now,
these constants are parsed straight away in the parser and turned into
objects. This allows constants with large numbers of digits (so
addresses issue #1103) and takes us a step closer to #722.
There is a lot potential in compress bytecodes and make more use of the
coding space. This patch introduces "multi" bytecodes which have their
argument included in the bytecode (by addition).
UNARY_OP and BINARY_OP now no longer take a 1 byte argument for the
opcode. Rather, the opcode is included in the first byte itself.
LOAD_FAST_[0,1,2] and STORE_FAST_[0,1,2] are removed in favour of their
multi versions, which can take an argument between 0 and 15 inclusive.
The majority of LOAD_FAST/STORE_FAST codes fit in this range and so this
saves a byte for each of these.
LOAD_CONST_SMALL_INT_MULTI is used to load small ints between -16 and 47
inclusive. Such ints are quite common and now only need 1 byte to
store, and now have much faster decoding.
In all this patch saves about 2% RAM for typically bytecode (1.8% on
64-bit test, 2.5% on pyboard test). It also reduces the binary size
(because bytecodes are simplified) and doesn't harm performance.
Blanket wide to all .c and .h files. Some files originating from ST are
difficult to deal with (license wise) so it was left out of those.
Also merged modpyb.h, modos.h, modstm.h and modtime.h in stmhal/.
3 emitter functions are needed only for emitcpy, and so we can #if them
out when compiling with emitcpy support.
Also remove unused SETUP_LOOP bytecode.
This is necessary to catch all cases where locals are referenced before
assignment. We still keep the _0, _1, _2 versions of LOAD_FAST to help
reduced the byte code size in RAM.
Addresses issue #457.
Adding this bytecode allows to remove 4 others related to
function/method calls with * and ** support. Will also help with
bytecodes that make functions/closures with default positional and
keyword args.
TODO: Decide if we really need separate bytecode for creating functions
with default arguments - we would need same for closures, then there're
keywords arguments too. Having all combinations is a small exponential
explosion, likely we need just 2 cases - simplest (no defaults, no kw),
and full - defaults & kw.
A big change. Micro Python objects are allocated as individual structs
with the first element being a pointer to the type information (which
is itself an object). This scheme follows CPython. Much more flexible,
not necessarily slower, uses same heap memory, and can allocate objects
statically.
Also change name prefix, from py_ to mp_ (mp for Micro Python).
Damien George
Paul Sokolovsky
John R. Lenton