Re: Pascal to Ada Tools?

[Dale Stanbrough <dale@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>]

Steve Doiel, steved@pacifier.com writes:
"I have come to the conclusion that the only way I will get such a translator
 is to write it myself.  This also gives me the opportunity learn more about
 Ada, since I am new to the language."
 


From last year on comp.lang.ada...
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From: mcneills@landcare.cri.nz (Stephen McNeill)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Pascal -> Ada Translator
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 10:23:56 LOCAL
Organization: Landcare Research New Zealand Ltd

In article <3ro5dp$r6t@news.pacifier.com> steved@pop3.pacifier.com writes:

>We have a bunch of code written in DEC's VaxELN Pascal...
>Ada looks like a straightfoward translation.  Anyone know where
>to find the tool?

It's not all that straightforward really, but it appears that the 
tedious part of translation of Pascal to Ada can be fairly well
automated.  Given that so many different dialects of Pascal exist,
it's hard to believe that there would be a single tool that would
deal with the problem comprehensively.  Specifically, dealing with
inter-module references (calling externally, global variables),
and dealing with the I/O system give the most headaches.

VAX Pascal (I assume VAXeln Pascal is the same or similar ?) is one
of the worst dialects to deal with, since it is relatively complex.
Standard Pascal is a lot easier, although much more restricted.

Pure 100% translation may be a bit of a holy Grail, but 95% translation
may be quite acceptable, and was in my case.  95% translation cut down 
my manual effort considerably, and left me to concentrate on cleaning
up the code, removing Pascal limitations and adding Ada strength.

While I can't point to you a publically available tool, here are some
pointers that may help:

1) A chapter in a book that I found useful:

       Rodgers,M.W "Pascal to Ada Conversion", pp 49-61,
       in "Scientific Ada" Ford,B and J.Kok and M.W.Rogers (Eds),
       Cambridge University Press, 1986, ISBN 0-521-33258-3.

2) A document reviewing some aspects of Non-Ada to Ada conversion:

       Kaman Sciences Corp. "A Review of Non-Ada to Ada Conversion"
       Prepared for Rome Laboratory, August 5 1993. [This is available
       as http://www.utica.kaman.com/techs/ada/NonAda2Ada.ToC.html]

3) A GNU public domain translator, originally written for GNAT, was
posted by Rolf Ebert in 1994 to this newsgroup.  I don't have an
email for him, since an earlier email address is no longer valid.  This
is a useful starting point for a translator, or it was for me.

Hope this helps.

Stephen

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