On_the_M2_interpreter_WF2012

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title: On the M2 interpreter WF2012 permalink: wiki/On_the_M2_interpreter_WF2012/ layout: wiki

The Macaulay2 user language is interpreted (not compiled) by Macaulay2. The interpreter is written in a language called D, created by Dan Grayson, (not the same as the commonly known language called D), so named because it is translated to C and then compiled. Semantically, the D language is similar to C, but various things are automated to ensure type safety, such as initialization of variables and allocation of memory. (A computer language is called "type safe" if the behavior of any program can be predicted from its source code. The C language is unsafe because of uninitialized variables, pointer arithmetic, and type casts.) Syntactically, the D language may seem reminiscent of C, and it can be understood well by knowing how it gets translated into C.

The source code for the D compiler is in svn://svn.macaulay2.com/Macaulay2/trunk/M2/Macaulay2/c, and the README file there describes the D language. The source code for the Macaulay2 interpreter is in svn://svn.macaulay2.com/Macaulay2/trunk/M2/Macaulay2/d.

Further development and maintenance of Macaulay2 will require a community of developers with a detailed knowledge of its internal structure, including the D compiler and the interpreter.