Re: [OT] ABI vs. API
On Sun, Feb 08, 2004 at 04:03:38PM -0700, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
> On 2004-02-08, Alan Chandler penned:
> > On Sunday 08 February 2004 20:49, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
> >> On 2004-02-08, Alan Chandler penned:
> > On the other hand, it is also possible for two different
> >> > languages to be used to write the implementation and the using code
> >> > such that the two compilers produce a compatible interface.
> >>
> >> Yes, although the latter would probably be non-trivial.
> >>
> >
> > Actually it happens all the time. Think about Linux, written in C,
> > but application programs written in all sorts of languages.
>
> I thought you were describing the situation of using two different
> languages to compile to an identical binary file.
>
Getting them both to compile to an identical binary file would be
difficult if not impossible since you would need to make them both
produce the same assembly code. Even harder when using optimizations.
The thing is that in order to call the interface you just need to have
the same function naming and parameter passing convention (I think the
parameter passing convention is usually platform specific and not
compiler specific but I am not sure of that). The byte order
((big/little) endien) is cpu specific and not compiler specific
(although I did run into a platform that you can configure in interrupts
a different endieness for different parts of the system ;-)
> --
> monique
>
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