An APL/370 compiler and some performance comparisons with APL interpreter and FORTRAN
Wai‐Mee Ching · ACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad · 1986
The experimental APL/370 E-compiler compiles a subset of APL which is large enough for most scientific and engineering uses, directly into 370 assembly code. The compiler does not require variable declarations. The front-end employs extensive type-shape analysis based on global dataflow analysis. The back-end takes the parse trees, graphs and tables produced by the front-end and generates 370-code which runs independently of the interpreter. The compiled-code executes at 2-10 times the speed of the interpreter on several one-line functions, and this ratio increases significantly with iterative programs. The code quality is comparable to that produced by an optimizing FORTRAN compiler on FORTRAN programs corresponding to our test cases. This removes the performance penalty of APL in computation intensive applications.