Re: WANTED: Ada-to-C Translator

[frank@bigdog.engr.arizona.edu (Frank Manning)]

In article <JSA.96Oct11153945@alexandria> jsa@alexandria
(Jon S Anthony) writes:

> No, "NO!" means just that - no.  The bit you reference here concerns
> an Ada _compiler_ which happened to use C as a backend target (for
> "portability" and whatever...)  While a compiler is a translator, the
> original question seems to really be one concerning a translator which
> would produce _human_ readable/maintainable code for all future
> reference.  That is, you use it once and toss the source and start
> manually maintaining the output.  This sort of thing is _very_
> different and is the source of all the "NO"s...

Well, perhaps that was the intent of the original question, but I
had also brought up an old thread (Oct 95) about the merits of an
8051 Ada compiler. I wondered about using one of these C-backend-
compilers for that purpose, which would not require human readable
output. In other words, the idea is to write and maintain Ada code,
not do a one-time translation and maintain the C code.

I got plenty of opinion about what a dumb idea this is, but nobody
told me where I can get one of these compilers -- dumb or not.

Perhaps if I went into more detail about what I want. The application
would be classified as academic fiddling, I suppose. I have a Blue
Earth Micro-440 with a built-in Basic interpreter and low-level
assembler. I've written short programs in a mixture of Basic and
assembler, and I'd prefer to write in a compiled language that's
somewhat safer than C.

I recognize that a C-backend-compiler would be difficult to optimize,
as Erik Magnuson points out. However, compared to a Basic interpreter,
I could still get at least an order of magnitude better performance
with NO optimization AT ALL.

On the other hand, maybe I should just go with C. Less trouble in the
long run.

-- Frank Manning