OPTIMIZING PROCEDURE CALLS FOR DELAYED NONLOCAL EXECUTION PROTOCOL

This work originated from the challenge to strengthen a C-like languag e compiler developed to support the compilation of sleepers, which are tools which allow complete access to the run-time stack in a delayed non-local execution protocol, Sleepers use a specialized form of proce dure call, for which the gain in time execution and space memory alloc ation becomes a crucial need, These two objectives have been attained thanks to a methodology which generalizes the traditional distinction between tail-calls and normal-calls, introducing the orthogonal distin ction between calls in which the calling environment is needed after t he call site and calls in which it is not, These two dichotomies divid e the space of calls into four classes, The strategy described in this paper is a simple and general framework which can be used to optimize the cah-procedure statement in C compilers, The paper discusses optim ization techniques appropriate to each class in turn, providing code d etails for SPARC and ALPHA processors.