Add el_mem_check() to el_runtime.c: reads ELC_MAX_MEM_MB (default 512),
checks RSS via getrusage (macOS bytes / Linux KB normalised to MB), prints
a clear diagnostic to stderr and exits(1) if exceeded.
Wire it into two places:
- compiler.el: upfront check at --emit-header entry point
- codegen.el: per-function check in the streaming loop after each
el_arena_pop, so runaway growth is caught at the earliest function
boundary rather than after the machine is already dying.
The --emit-header path previously called parse() which builds the entire
program AST in memory before writing the .elh file. For checkout.el (~491
lines with HTML template trees and deep BinOp string-concat chains), this
exhausted memory before the header could be written.
Fix: replace parse() + emit_header() with scan_fn_sigs_el() +
emit_header_from_sigs(). The new path tokenises the source once, then
walks the flat token list skipping over function bodies entirely — peak
memory is O(tokens) instead of O(whole-program AST).
New functions in parser.el:
- scan_type_el: reads a type annotation and returns its El source string
- scan_params_el: reads (name: Type, ...) and returns El params string
- scan_fn_sigs_el: token-level scan that collects El-style fn signatures
without building any expression AST nodes
New function in compiler.el:
- emit_header_from_sigs: writes .elh from scan_fn_sigs_el output
Self-hosting check: elc compiled with new elc, diff of outputs is
identical (zero difference).
Smoke test: elc --emit-header checkout.el produces correct three-entry
.elh (previously truncated at two entries due to mid-parse OOM).
Implement compile_test() entry point that emits a C test harness instead
of a normal program. Test blocks (previously skipped) now compile to
static functions with per-assertion pass/fail tracking. Assert statement
added to parser and codegen. Runtime extended with now_ns, fs_list_json,
json_build_object, json_build_array, json_escape_string, state_has,
state_get_or. Fix float negation codegen, float equality comparisons,
time_to_parts return type (JSON string), time_format empty-fmt, json_set
raw-value semantics, state_keys JSON array return. All 310 native tests
pass across 9 suites (core, text, string, math, env, state, json, time, fs).
Wrapped compile() body in el_arena_push/pop so the arena is active
before lex() and scan_fn_sigs(). Previously both ran with
_tl_arena_active=0, leaking all token and signature strings permanently.
Also prevents inner pop(mark=0) calls from deactivating the arena
between per-function scopes. Verified: self-host PASS, RSS stable.
Combines two orthogonal optimizations:
1. Flat token list (from beta): lex() returns [Any] with alternating kind/value
pairs instead of [Map], eliminating one ElMap per token (~3 mallocs each).
Parser updated: tok_kind(t,i) = t[2*i], tok_value(t,i) = t[2*i+1].
2. Char code dispatch (from alpha): lex() hot loop uses str_char_code -> Int
instead of str_char_at -> strdup String for all character classification.
Eliminates ~400K x 16B = 6.4MB of temporary string allocations.
scan_digits and scan_ident also updated to use str_char_code.
Result on main.el: 17.1MB -> 14.4MB peak RSS (-16%).
Self-hosting: PASS.
will.anderson
Will Anderson