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is this True ?
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:27 am
by Jimmy
hi,
i have read somewhere that harbour Programm are :
And then the programs generated with it are just programs with tokens that are interpreted at runtime, not even real, linked programs.
Re: is this True ?
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:53 am
by Antonio Linares
Harbour apps are real apps that use pcode (not tokens) but they are true executables.
In fact Harbour provides a compiler option to avoid the pcode use and just generates straigth C code.
Who has said that, has a very little idea of virtual machines...

Re: is this True ?
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:05 pm
by karinha
Is this a prank Jimmy? hahahahahaha.
¿Es esto una broma, Jimmy? jajajajajaja.
Regards, saludos.
Re: is this True ?
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 3:05 pm
by Jimmy
hi,
the man answers :
https://www.xbaseforum.de/viewtopic.php?t=236&start=3 ( ramses 03 Feb 2025, 12:58, start from last Msg )
This contains tokens at the beginning of the file which are then processed and interpreted at runtime.
i can not believe this.
Re: is this True ?
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 3:28 pm
by paquitohm
Jimmy wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:27 am
hi,
i have read somewhere that harbour Programm are :
And then the programs generated with it are just programs with tokens that are interpreted at runtime, not even real, linked programs.
https://github.com/dmajkic/harbour-core ... /pcode.txt
And UT for Harbour on web at
https://carles9000.github.io
Re: is this True ?
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:02 pm
by Enrico Maria Giordano
Jimmy wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 3:05 pm
hi,
the man answers :
https://www.xbaseforum.de/viewtopic.php?t=236&start=3 ( ramses 03 Feb 2025, 12:58, start from last Msg )
This contains tokens at the beginning of the file which are then processed and interpreted at runtime.
i can not believe this.
You should. Please open the generated C source file and you will see.
Re: is this True ?
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 5:39 pm
by Jimmy
hi,
Antonio Linares wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:53 am
Harbour apps are real apps that use pcode (not tokens) but they are true executables.
Who has said that, has a very little idea of virtual machines...
now i understand a little more how harbour/PCODE work.
what is the difference between "interpreted at runtime" and "a Clipper VirtualMachine() that will
process those pcode bytes."
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Re: is this True ?
Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2025 9:41 pm
by Antonio Linares
Dear Jimmy,
A CPU is able to do lots of different tasks. You can think of a CPU as a "wild horse", so powerful and at the same time risky as it has a lot of energy and many different actions that can be performed.
The idea of building a virtual machine is to reduce all those possibilites into a bunch of them, so the "horse" is under control, and no matter what errors we may do with the code, or what errors the users may do, the "horse" will remain in control.
Thats basically why we build a virtual machine. We just want to allow a bunch of different actions so the app will never become "out of control" most of the times ending with a GPF. The "horse" will deliver its power with control. No way to loose that control.
That is what made Clipper so robust and thats why Harbour behaves the same way
