Past exam of the year 1 of the computer science course of the University of Oxford / 2015 / Digital systems, linear algebra, introduction to formal proof / 6 / c

A computed memory address is just another integer on the operand stack. For a pointer held at fixed address $p$, const p; load obtains the pointed-to address; another load obtains its contents. More generally, any expression that leaves an address on top may be followed by load, or may be retained beneath a computed value for store.

For an array whose base address is $b$ and whose element size is $w$ address units, the address of entry $i$ is $b+wM[p_i]$, where $p_i$ stores the index. Add zero-address instructions mul and dup, with dup mapping $S,p$ to $S,p,p$. A suitable sequence isThe first six instructions leave the element address $p=b+wM[p_i]$. The remaining suffix evolves aswith the final effectThe address is computed once and duplicated, so both accesses refer to the same array element. For unit-sized elements omit const w; mul. If the base address is itself held in a variable, replace const b by the instructions loading that variable's value. No instruction other than const requires an explicit operand.