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reword the four steps a bit

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Nicolas Dandrimont 2014-01-02 18:09:33 +01:00
parent 1d5847823b
commit a1895f635c
1 changed files with 13 additions and 12 deletions
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docs/language/internals.rst
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@ -181,13 +181,14 @@ Hy Internal Theory
Overview
--------
The Hy internals work by acting as a front-end to Python bytecode, so that
Hy it's self compiles down to Python Bytecode, allowing an unmodified Python
runtime to run Hy.
The Hy internals work by acting as a front-end to Python bytecode, so
that Hy itself compiles down to Python Bytecode, allowing an unmodified
Python runtime to run Hy code, without even noticing it.
The way we do this is by translating Hy into Python AST, and building that AST
down into Python bytecode using standard internals, so that we don't have
to duplicate all the work of the Python internals for every single Python
The way we do this is by translating Hy into an internal Python AST
datastructure, and building that AST down into Python bytecode using
modules from the Python standard library, so that we don't have to
duplicate all the work of the Python internals for every single Python
release.
Hy works in four stages. The following sections will cover each step of Hy
@ -195,8 +196,8 @@ from source to runtime.
.. _lexing:
Lexing / tokenizing
-------------------
Steps 1 and 2: Tokenizing and parsing
-------------------------------------
The first stage of compiling hy is to lex the source into tokens that we can
deal with. We use a project called rply, which is a really nice (and fast)
@ -216,8 +217,8 @@ on (directly), and it's what the compiler uses when it compiles Hy down.
.. _compiling:
Compiling
---------
Step 3: Hy compilation to Python AST
------------------------------------
This is where most of the magic in Hy happens. This is where we take Hy AST
(the models), and compile them into Python AST. A couple of funky things happen
@ -329,8 +330,8 @@ into::
By forcing things into an ``ast.expr`` if we can, but the general idea holds.
Runtime
-------
Step 4: Python bytecode output and runtime
------------------------------------------
After we have a Python AST tree that's complete, we can try and compile it to
Python bytecode by pushing it through ``eval``. From here on out, we're no