WebAssembly - Bytecode format

WebAssembly is an open source bytecode format created in 2015 by Alon Zakai.

#43on PLDB

9Years Old

2kRepos

Download source code:

git clone https://github.com/WebAssembly/wabt

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WebAssembly (Wasm, WA) is a web standard that defines a binary format and a corresponding assembly-like text format for executable code in Web pages. It is meant to enable executing code nearly as fast as running native machine code. It was envisioned to complement JavaScript to speed up performance-critical parts of web applications and later on to enable web development in languages other than JavaScript. Read more on Wikipedia...

Tags: bytecode format
WebAssembly is developed on GitHub and has 6,621 stars
There are at least 1,641 WebAssembly repos on GitHub
Early development of WebAssembly happened in W3C
WebAssembly is written in C++, HTML, C, JavaScript, Python, WebAssembly, Markdown, YAML, Bourne shell, Make, CMake, CSS, Lua
The Google BigQuery Public Dataset GitHub snapshot shows 148 users using WebAssembly in 160 repos on GitHub
There are 12,000 members in the WebAssembly subreddit
Pygments supports syntax highlighting for WebAssembly
GitHub supports syntax highlighting for WebAssembly
Learn WebAssembly on exercism.
Indeed.com has 5 matches for "webassembly engineer".
webassembly.org was registered in 2015
See also: (12 related languages) Asm.js, Assembly language, JavaScript, Unity, LLVM IR, C, Rust, Java, C#, Go, S-expressions, DOI
29 PLDB concepts link to WebAssembly: AssemblyScript, beef-lang, binaryen, BlitzMax, cloc, Cwerg, Cyber, Emscripten, Euphoria, Flow9, invokator, ktye/k, Node.js, Porffor, POV-Ray SDL, psyche, Pygments, rio, Rust, SpiderMonkey, tridash, v8, Virgil, wah, walt, WebAssembly, wasmer, wats, Wax

Example from the web:

Example from hello-world:

(module
    (import "wasi_unstable" "fd_write"
        (func $fd_write (param i32 i32 i32 i32) (result i32))
    )

    (memory 1)
    (export "memory" (memory 0))

    (data (i32.const 0) "\08\00\00\00\0c\00\00\00Hello World\n")

    (func $main (export "_start")
        i32.const 1
        i32.const 0
        i32.const 1
        i32.const 20
        call $fd_write
        drop
    )
)

Example from Linguist:

(module
  (import "env" "printInt" (func $printInt (param i32)))
  (func $add (param $lhs i32) (param $rhs i32) (result i32)
    get_local $lhs
    get_local $rhs
    i32.add
  )

  (func $main
    (call $printInt
      (call $add (i32.const 9) (i32.const 8))))

  (export "main" (func $main))
)

Example from Wikipedia:

(module
  (import "math" "exp" (func $exp (param f64) (result f64)))
  (func (export "doubleExp") (param $0 f64) (result f64)
    (f64.mul
      (call $exp
        (get_local $0))
      (f64.const 2))))

Language features

Feature	Supported	Example	Token
Comments	✓
MultiLine Comments	✓
Line Comments	✓
Integers	✓
Floats	✓
Hexadecimals	✓