Re: Ada95 to ANSI_C converter

[Craig Franck <clfranck@worldnet.att.net>]

xanadu@ripco.com (Jennifer E. Lee) wrote:
>
>In article <dewar.859432540@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>>Nick says
>>
>><<Essentially, this is a task which should be quite feasible, as long as a
>>moderately pragmatic approach is taken (IMHO!).>>
>>
>>Only if you restrict the Ada 95 to a very small subset. There are many
>>features in Ada 95 that will cause significant trouble in converting to
>>C (e.g. nested procedures, dynamic aggregates, dynamic arrays, particularly
>>those in records, variant records, finalization, exceptions, packed arrays,
>>etc. etc.)
>>
>
>So it is impossible for such thing like Ada to C converter being made.
>Is this what you are suggesting?

It may be impractical. Is there a lot of code to convert, and
will you use this converter for other projects? The simplest
way to convert would be to have one group of Ada programmers
convert the Ada program to a PDL description of the code, along
with constraints and specifications. Give that to a C group
and let them code it. Run both programs on the same test data
and see if they perfrom to specification. It would difficult
to automate this process; writing the program would take more
time than any one (or several) conversions by hand. Of course,
maybe you will luck out and a product to do this is already
available. Good Luck!

-- 
Craig
clfranck@worldnet.att.net
Manchester, NH
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and
won't change the subject -- Winston Churchill