Bytecode

lovm2 is centered around the value stack. This data structure has a variety of tasks such as passing parameters to functions or acting as a computation buffer for operations. There are instructions that put values on top of the stack like CPush, LPush, and GPush. Some just take a value off and store it somewhere like LMove, GMove. Almost all other instructions will take a given amount of values from it and leave a return value in place. You can also implement your own bytecode instructions (see Interrupt chapter for more).

For example, the term 1 + (2 * 3) will be compiled to this sequence:

 instruction    | stack
----------------------------
 CPush          | [1]
 CPush          | [1, 2]
 CPush          | [1, 2, 3]
 Mul            | [1, 6]
 Add            | [7]

You do not need to micromanage the bytecode itself. There are common language constructs with which you can built pretty much everything. These constructs are composed into a high-level intermediate representation so every new function gets its own LV2Function structure. Below you can see the transformation process of a function into a runnable LV2CodeObject where each arrow means "lowering" to the next level.

LV2Function -> LIR -> LV2CodeObject

LIR or low-level intermediate representation is not directly exposed to the user but it is quite crucial if you want to understand how the bytecode generator works under the hood.

LV2CodeObject's on their own are already valid programs bundling together instructions, constants and variables. As usual in every language, functions can be grouped together and exposed to the virtual machine in a construct called LV2Module. Introducing this module level abstraction makes sense as we will later work with collections that are not backed by lovm2 bytecode but native functions.

LV2Function -> LIR 
                    \
LV2Function -> LIR    -> LV2CodeObject -> LV2Module --> LV2Vm
                    /
LV2Function -> LIR