Exploring ActionScript Bytecode with IronPython

OK, so I'm not fully certain what this about - but it certainly looks interesting.

AbcExplorationLib is "a library to read and write ActionScript Byte Code (ABC) files. When completed it could be used for compiled program analysis or as part the back end of an experimental compiler. It is written in F# but it could be used from other .NET languages. Inspiration for this library comes from many excellent libraries for bytecode manipulation such as BCEL, ASM, Cecil or System.Reflection.Emit".

The blog entry linked to here, is about experimenting with ActionScript bytecode from IronPython; and in particular with the bytecode for the switch statement.

• Support for the LookupSwitch opcode in AbcExplorationLib
  

Given the following ActionScript code:

var x;
for(x = 1;x <>
switch(x) {
case 1:
print("one");
break;
case 2:
print("two");
break;
case 3:
print("three");
break;
case 4:
print("four");
break;
}
}

We compile this file to a .abc file using the following command:

$ java -jar /opt/flex3sdk/lib/asc.jar testswitch.as

testswitch.abc, 280 bytes written

By using a little IronPython example included with AbcExplorationLib we can see how this library interprets the LookupSwitch opcode:

$ mono /opt/IronPython-2.0/ipy.exe ../ipyexample/abccontents.py testswitch.abc
...
Instructions:
getlocal_0
pushscope
pushbyte 1
getglobalscope
swap
setslot 1
jump dest177

And so on...