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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Ada to C translator
Date: 1997/02/09
Message-ID: <dewar.855500821@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 217605506
references: <32E4C115.55BD@iies.es> <1997Jan22.062734.1@eisner>
 <5d29nv$sqv@mn5.swip.net> <dewar.854940250@merv> <5ddp0u$elq@mn5.swip.net>
organization: New York University
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-02-09T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


<<As Ada is so different from C it is quite natural that Ada translated
into C looks horrible to a C programmer :-)  gi-go>>


Well I know there is a smiley there, but still, this statement is highly
misleading. The issue here has to do with much more fundamental issues
than Ada being different from C, it has to do with a mismatch in semantic
level for certain operations that leads to C that looks horrible to
anyone.

For example, because of the need to do overflow checking, we may well
have to translate:

   x := (a * b) + (c * d);

to

   x = PLUSOV (MULTOV (a, b), MULTOV (c,d));

where PLUSOV and MULTOV are macros that use operators like :? to check
for overflow. There are many other such cases to be dealt with.