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From: geert@fozzie.sun3.iaf.nl (Geert Bosch)
Subject: Re: Ada to C translator
Date: 1997/03/26
Message-ID: <5hapke$9g@fozzie.sun3.iaf.nl>#1/1
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References: <5e7rd2$ve6$1@news.nyu.edu>
 <19970226043600.XAA02150@ladder02.news.aol.com> <dewar.856967455@merv>
 <01bc361b$94999000$fc00af88@godiva>
Organization: La Calandre Infortunee
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-03-26T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Keith Allan Shillington (keith@sd.aonix.com) wrote:  Robert!
   Honestly.  I'd heard a rumor that you were such a beast yourself!' :-) 
   Of course, I suppose that pointing you at a C source and
   expecting a translation to Ada would be a very expensive
   operation.....

Note that this is from C to Ada and besides that I think Robert Dewar
has argued more than once that it is more useful to use pragma Import
instead of translating C code.  Even a few GNAT tools (gnatbl and
gnatchp) still are C programs.

In general an automatic conversion does not make a lot of sense and
manual translation is expensive indeed.

Regards,
   Geert

PS. One of the nice properties of compilers is that when you feed them
    some source, they won't object but try to compile it anyway.  Never
    encountered a compiler that said: "It doesn't make sense even
    trying to compile this code. First fix the layout, use descriptive
    identifiers and add comments where appropriate."