We began this book by studying processes and by describing processes in terms of functions written in JavaScript. To explain the meanings of these functions, we used a succession of models of evaluation: the substitution model of chapter 1, the environment model of chapter 3, and the metacircular evaluator of chapter 4. Our examination of the metacircular evaluator, in particular, dispelled much of the mystery of how JavaScript-like languages are interpreted. But even the metacircular evaluator leaves important questions unanswered, because it fails to elucidate the mechanisms of control in a JavaScript system. For instance, the evaluator does not explain how the evaluation of a subexpression manages to return a value to the expression that uses this value. Also, the evaluator does not explain how some recursive functions can generate iterative processes (that is, be evaluated using constant space) whereas other recursive functions will generate recursive processes.[1] This chapter addresses both of these issues.

We will describe processes in terms of the step-by-step operation of a traditional computer. Such a computer, or register machine, sequentially executes instructions that manipulate the contents of a fixed set of storage elements called registers. A typical register-machine instruction applies a primitive operation to the contents of some registers and assigns the result to another register. Our descriptions of processes executed by register machines will look very much like machine-language programs for traditional computers. However, instead of focusing on the machine language of any particular computer, we will examine several JavaScript functions and design a specific register machine to execute each function. Thus, we will approach our task from the perspective of a hardware architect rather than that of a machine-language computer programmer. In designing register machines, we will develop mechanisms for implementing important programming constructs such as recursion. We will also present a language for describing designs for register machines. In section 5.2 we will implement a JavaScript program that uses these descriptions to simulate the machines we design.

Most of the primitive operations of our register machines are very simple. For example, an operation might add the numbers fetched from two registers, producing a result to be stored into a third register. Such an operation can be performed by easily described hardware. In order to deal with list structure, however, we will also use the memory operations head, tail, and pair, which require an elaborate storage-allocation mechanism. In section 5.3 we study their implementation in terms of more elementary operations.

In section 5.4, after we have accumulated experience formulating simple functions as register machines, we will design a machine that carries out the algorithm described by the metacircular evaluator of section 4.1. This will fill in the gap in our understanding of how JavaScript programs are interpreted, by providing an explicit model for the mechanisms of control in the evaluator. In section 5.5 we will study a simple compiler that translates JavaScript programs into sequences of instructions that can be executed directly with the registers and operations of the evaluator register machine.