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WebAssembly

WebAssembly (Wasm) is a programming language that runs on browsers (stack based VM). Compared to JavaScript, Wasm is faster, more memory efficient and file size efficient and safer.

Wasm can't access the DOM API.

WebAssembly is supported (2019?) by Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge

The specification is defined by W3C as a long-live web standard.

Compiling c source

A C source file can be compiled into Wasm with emscripten:

The folllowing command produces a .wast file.

$ emcc -O3 -g source.c

It is also possible to create a html file:

$ emcc -O3  source.c -o webPage.html
$ python3 -m http.server 8888
$ open localhost:8888/webPage.html

Runtime environment of emscripten

emscripten provides a Unix like runtime environment.

Noteable features that are missing are:

stdin
Terminal screen
Thus also no terminal library (such as ncurses)

Misc

When executing WebAssembly, a browser will enforce the same-origin and permissions policies (as it does when executing other code).

Plans for the future

a WebAssembly module can be loaded like ES modules (<script type='module'>).
Allowing WebAssmebly to call Web APIs directly

WebAssembly

Compiling c source

Runtime environment of emscripten

Misc

See also