> dicts certainly involve some thought there

One way to start could be to ignore performance of the data structure.

The first main job dicts are being used for is the `mem` dict mapping a key (variable name) to some value record.

A data structure that supports Store(K, V) & V = Get(K) could be something like an stack allocated array of (Key, Value) pairs, that you search through using linear search to implement Store & Get. It wouldn't be very fast, but you probably don't have too many items in a typical DSL program. You'd need to implement some kind of stack or so on - or perhaps you could get away with reserving some fixed capacity.

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epestr 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Well the problem is that the DSL uses strings, so any representation which keeps variable names as strings still needs storage and comparison, which currently only the fixed type does. Though c2dsl could instead use a unique integer for every string for variables.

The first value of each instruction would then always be one of a fixed set of opcodes, variables their IDs, and numbers left as-is (and we've invented machine code :)). Then (K, V) is always fixed-size and laid out predictably in memory, so the linear-search approach sounds reasonable.

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shoo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

another approach could be to support strings, of length exactly 1. would 256 unique strings be enough to name all the variables (& functions?) in an interesting program?

	▲	epestr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yup. > rg var ray.dsl \| wc -l 142 > rg func ray.dsl \| wc -l 6 +28 for opcodes, bringing it to 176. So it works for this interesting program, the raytracer, but the compiler likely requires way more. Maybe not the 4 cells I've been using, but 2^16 = 65k would be enough buckets but unique names.