Over at null program, Christopher Wellons has an excellent post on Emacs Byte Code Internals. Most people won’t care, of course, but we’re nerds and we don’t like black boxes. As Wellons says, the byte code internals are under documented—or in some cases, undocumented—so this post is welcome for those of us who’d like to know what’s going on.
There’s no point in my recapitulating what Wellons said so you should head on over and take a look. I don’t think this information is going to be of much practical use unless you’re interested in working on the byte compiler or interpreter but you may find that it’s just what you need for some project you’re thinking of. If nothing else, you’ll discover a bit more of how Emacs works.
Wellons is on a roll. Last week, I wrote about his post on closures in Emacs. He’s providing the sort of technical information that helps us all become better Emacs Knights. The more we know about the minutia of Emacs internals, the more productive Emacs users we’ll be.