Re: Compiling Ada into C

[mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack)]

In article <49@obie.UUCP> wes@obie.UUCP (Barnacle Wes) writes:
>In article <2460@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>, neff@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Randy Neff) writes:
>> Why do people want to compile Ada into C?
>
>Your nine observations that follow this question are correct.  They
>are also obvious.  If you were writing an Ada compiler that compiled
>to assembly code, or directly to object code, you would also have to
>take all of this into account.  The simple fact is C is much more
>portable than any assembler.  If you write an Ada compiler that
>compiles to Rolm 1666 assembler, the compiler can only generate code
>for the 1666 and similar processors.  If you write it to produces C,
>you can run it on many processors, you just have to port the
>executable (probably written in C itself) to the target machine.

I have been trying (now and then) to write an Ada-to-C translator
for the last couple of years, for the reasons you mention.

This is, shall we say, somewhat nontrivial. Has anyone done
this successfully? 


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                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
BTW, Asimov was quoting Schiller.
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