Re: Why is AppleScript compiled?
Re: Why is AppleScript compiled?
- Subject: Re: Why is AppleScript compiled?
- From: Jon Pugh <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 20:56:00 -0700
At 3:35 PM -0400 8/8/03, Steve Roy wrote:
>
Does anyone know why AppleScript is a compiled language? When introducing people to AppleScript, it has happened that someone was surprised that AppleScript is compiled instead of being simply interpreted like shell script or Perl. And when asked the question, I can't figure out why Apple made that choice. Does anyone know?
There are three reasons why AppleScript is compiled.
The first is that compiled scripts can be protected, unlike HyperCard scripts, via the "run only" save mode.
The second is that AppleScript originally supported alternate languages, and compiled scripts could be decompiled into other languages, or dialects. The Japanese version shipped for quite some time and got quite a bit of use before Apple threw in the towel on alternate languages.
The third is that by compiling the script, the runtime was smaller and faster. Since AppleScript was originally written on 68030 machines, this was significant.
There are other benefits, but I believe these were the primary reasons.
Jon
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