Getting started
Download CS340_Lab19.zip. Unzip it somewhere (e.g., in your CS340 directory). The lab files are in a directory called CS340_Lab19.
MiniVM
MiniVM is a toy stack-based bytecode virtual machine. It’s a little bit like the Java virtual machine, although greatly simplified.
The documentation gives a general overview of how MiniVM works. You can look at the instruction set documents each supported instruction.
You can also browse some example programs.
Your task
Write a program to compute the sum of the first N integers and print out the sum. Since MiniVM doesn’t support reading user input, you will need to hard code N in the program.
The program is in the file sumints.mvm. You can execute it interactively with the command
./MiniVM.rb -x -i sumints.mvm
In interactive mode, each time you press Enter, one instruction will be executed.
You can execute it noninteractively with the command
./MiniVM.rb -x sumints.mvm
Interactive execution is useful for understanding the exact behavior of the program. Noninteractive execution is useful if you want to test the program for larger values of N (where tracing the entire execution of the program would be tedious.)
If you have time
Try modifying the program to use a procedure to compute the sum of 1..N.
Solution
sumints.mvm, sumints_proc.mvm (version using a procedure)
