What is Web Assembly mean? WebAssembly (sometimes abbreviated Wasm) is an open standard that defines a portable binary-code format for executable programs, and a corresponding textual assembly language, as well as interfaces for facilitating interactions between such programs and their host environment. The main goal of WebAssembly is to enable high-performance applications on web pages, but the format is designed to be executed and integrated in other environments as well, including standalone ones.
In 2021, it received the Programming Languages Software Award from ACM SIGPLAN.
WebAssembly (i.e. WebAssembly Core Specification (then version 1.0, 1.1 is in draft) and WebAssembly JavaScript Interface) became a World Wide Web Consortium recommendation on 5 December 2019, alongside HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
WebAssembly can support (at least in theory) any language (e.g. compiled or interpreted) on any operating system (with help of appropriate tools), and in practice all of the most popular languages already have at least some level of support.
The Emscripten SDK can compile any LLVM-supported languages (such as C, C++ or Rust, among others) source code into a binary file which runs in the same sandbox as JavaScript code. Emscripten provides bindings for several commonly used environment interfaces like WebGL. There is no direct Document Object Model (DOM) access; however, it is possible to create proxy functions for this, for example through stdweb, web_sys, and js_sys when using the Rust language.
WebAssembly implementations usually use either ahead-of-time (AOT) or just-in-time (JIT) compilation, but may also use an interpreter. While the first implementations have landed in web browsers, there are also non-browser implementations for general-purpose use, including Wasmer, Wasmtime or WAMR, wasm3, WAVM, and many others. The WebAssembly website has a page comparing popular engines and their implemented features.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) maintains the standard with contributions from Mozilla, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Fastly, Intel, and Red Hat.
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Posted on 27 Oct 2024, this text provides information on Computing related to Miscellaneous in Computing. Please note that while accuracy is prioritized, the data presented might not be entirely correct or up-to-date. This information is offered for general knowledge and informational purposes only, and should not be considered as a substitute for professional advice.