From a169ee4c61e2b340523e7cf3c64425d7f79e31a8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Konstantin Nazarov <mail@knazarov.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2024 21:12:59 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Publish a post about serialization/deserialization

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+X-Date: 2024-01-07T23:00:00Z
+X-Note-Id: ed8dd390-20db-4eb0-95b6-96f495f1d5ed
+Subject: Text to binary and back
+X-Slug: text_to_binary_and_back
+
+In the last couple of days I've finished an important part of the virtual machine, that
+allows to translate objects from the binary representation in memory to a text form, and
+back.
+
+For example, take this data structure:
+
+```
+;; this is an array
+[
+1 2 3 ;; numbers
+foobar ;; symbol
+{"foo" "bar"} ;; dict with str key
+]
+```
+
+If you save it into data.txt, you can convert it into the binary format:
+
+```
+cat data.txt | ./sd > data.bin
+```
+
+The `data.bin` file would contain the encoded version, which we can examine with the standard `xxd` tool:
+
+```
+cat data.bin | xxd
+
+00000000: 0000 0000 0000 0000 90c8 0000 0000 0000  ................
+00000010: 0500 0000 0000 0000 0700 0000 0000 0000  ................
+00000020: 0100 0000 0000 0000 0700 0000 0000 0000  ................
+00000030: 0200 0000 0000 0000 0700 0000 0000 0000  ................
+00000040: 0300 0000 0000 0000 9968 0000 0000 0000  .........h......
+00000050: 4000 0000 1061 0000 9588 0000 0000 0000  @....a..........
+00000060: 4000 0000 1061 0000 0600 0000 0000 0000  @....a..........
+00000070: 6600 0000 6f00 0000 6f00 0000 6200 0000  f...o...o...b...
+00000080: 6100 0000 7200 0000 0100 0000 0000 0000  a...r...........
+00000090: 91b0 0000 0000 0000 4000 0000 1061 0000  ........@....a..
+000000a0: 91c4 0000 0000 0000 4000 0000 1061 0000  ........@....a..
+000000b0: 0300 0000 0000 0000 6600 0000 6f00 0000  ........f...o...
+000000c0: 6f00 0000 0300 0000 0000 0000 6200 0000  o...........b...
+000000d0: 6100 0000 7200 0000                      a...r...
+```
+
+And you can also decode the binary data back to the text form:
+
+```
+cat data.bin | ./sd -d
+
+[1 2 3 foobar {"foo" "bar"}]
+```
+
+This would be exactly the same data structure we had initially, just without comments.
+
+You can also do the same trick with bytecode produced by the assembler, since bytecode is also
+serialized as a frozen data structure:
+
+```
+cat examples/factorial.asm | ./asm | ./sd -d
+
+[[31372u32 3084u32 2956u32 246661u32 50178u32 4294913042u32 779u32 3342u32 7447u32 24u32] ["! is"]]
+```
+
+And we can even turn the bytecode back from the text representation to the binary, and run it:
+
+```
+cat examples/factorial.asm | ./asm | ./sd -d | ./sd | ./vm
+
+15 ! is 1307674368000
+```
+
+
+This serialization/deserialization mechanism is important, since it serves also as a parser. My programming
+language is based on S-Expressions, so the program is already represented as a hierarchical data structure
+that can be loaded with the same mechanism, directly to the VM data structures. Of course I still need to
+work on the compiler that would be smarter than just an assembler, but it is a good start.