Bytecode Format

Technical reference for the Quartz bytecode (.qzb) format.

File Format

QZB files have the following structure:

+------------------+
| Magic Number (4B)|  "QZB\0"
+------------------+
| Version (4B)     |
+------------------+
| Metadata Section |
+------------------+
| Constant Pool    |
+------------------+
| Code Section     |
+------------------+

Inspecting Bytecode

# Compile to bytecode
./quartz --compile -o program.qzb program.qz

# Dump metadata
./quartz --dump-qzb-meta program.qzb

# Disassemble
python3 tools/qzb_disasm.py program.qzb

Common Opcodes

Opcode	Description
`LOAD_CONST`	Push constant onto stack
`LOAD_VAR`	Load variable value
`STORE_VAR`	Store to variable
`ADD`	Add top two stack values
`SUB`	Subtract
`MUL`	Multiply
`DIV`	Divide
`CALL`	Call function
`RETURN`	Return from function
`JUMP`	Unconditional jump
`JUMP_IF_FALSE`	Conditional jump

For more details, see the Bytecode Compilation guide.