Re: Ada -> C or C++ translator

["Martin Dowie" <martin.dowie@nospam.baesystems.com>]

"David Rasmussen" <pinkfloydhomer@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3D0DD57A.5000402@yahoo.com...
> I know that some Ada features don't have portable counterparts in C or
> C++ (like concurrency), but does some sort of translator exist from Ada
> to C or C++? It could use C or C++ as an Intermediate Representation
> language similar to what the Comeau C/C++ compiler does. This way, one
> could do the development with Ada and have all the advantages of Ada,
> and end up with hopefully more correct code, and then for the release,
> one could translate to C or C++ and use some of the very effecient
> compilers for these languages. I realize that the support of some parts
> of Ada's runtime system (like exceptions) wont be intact, but for
> projects where this isn't important, such a translator could still be
> useful.

Why do you suspect that an Ada compiler won't give you decent performance?
The performance of today's Ada95 compilers seem pretty much on a par with
the C/C++ compilers I'm using. There is an argument that they should be
able to produce more efficient code too but other than the 'famous' Tartan
compiler paper, I have yet to see much evidence of this.

Didn't Averstar/Intermetric's Ada compiler use 'C' as an intermediate
representation?