From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,4039d4e40ecde64c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kst@aonix.com (Keith Thompson) Subject: Re: Ada to C translator Date: 1997/01/30 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 213176737 sender: news@thomsoft.com (USENET News Admin @flash) x-nntp-posting-host: pulsar references: <32E4C115.55BD@iies.es> <1997Jan22.062734.1@eisner> organization: Aonix, San Diego, CA, USA newsgroups: comp.lang.ada originator: kst@pulsar Date: 1997-01-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In <1997Jan22.062734.1@eisner> kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes: [...] > The consensus in comp.lang.ada from the _many_ times this has been > addressed in the past is that no general purpose translator could > be built since the semantics of Ada are a superset of the semantics > of C or C++ (no tasking for example). Please read archives of the > comp.lang.ada rather than starting the discussion up from scratch. I don't agree that a general purpose translator is impossible. After all, we know that a general purpose Ada to machine code translator is possible, and machine code does not inherently support tasking. The trick is that you'd have to find a way to support or emulate tasking (and other Ada-specific features) in the generated C. The logical way to do this is to generate calls to runtime support routines, possibly written in Ada. Of course, this doesn't imply that an Ada to C translator is necessarily a good idea. Generating legible and maintainable C from Ada is a daunting task. Even if you could do it, it would be sort of like transmuting gold into lead. 8-)} There have been proposals to use C as an intermediate language to simplify porting an Ada compiler to new architectures. I don't know how practical this turned out to be. Note that C code generated as an intermediate language is almost certain to be illegible and unmaintainable. -- Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@aonix.com <*> TeleSo^H^H^H^H^H^H Alsy^H^H^H^H Thomson Softw^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Aonix 10251 Vista Sorrento Parkway, Suite 300, San Diego, CA, USA, 92121-2706 "SPOON!" -- The Tick