Extensible Embeddable Language - Internals

Internals

EEL source code is compiled into bytecode for a custom VM, which has a relatively high level instruction set designed to minimize instruction count and thus overhead. The EEL VM is register based and "stackless", as in not relying on the C call stack for managing VM contexts.

The basic memory management method is reference counting, which allows automatic memory management with deterministic timing, without the need for concurrent garbage collection.

The VM uses "limbo lists" to keep track of intermediate objects created inside expressions and the like, which greatly simplifies exception handling, and eliminates the need for active reference counting in every single operation.