.dat
files are source codes that has already been lexed & parsed, so these are the final program but in a more compressed format.
One reason for these files is that they are much faster to run. If you compile your program down to a.dat
file and execute it through hermes, then hermes does not need to go through the lexing or parsing stage again, it will just execute it right away.
So in short,
.dat
files are a lot faster to execute.
This is currently not supported ... funny huh?
It's coming soon though, so hold on.