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: 1014db,c0f035b936128b6c
X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public
X-Google-Thread: 103376,c0f035b936128b6c
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Ada95 to ANSI_C converter
Date: 1997/03/28
Message-ID: <dewar.859559977@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 229144628
References: <5hbrah$ctt$1@gail.ripco.com>
 <01bc3a3d$7734db20$63f482c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> <dewar.859432540@merv>
 <5hfble$4d0$1@news.pacifier.com>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c
Date: 1997-03-28T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Steve says

<<It's amazing that Ada can be translated to machine code and is so difficult
  to translate to 'C'.  After all 'C' isn't really that much different than
  machine code is it? ;-)>>

Yes, it is not hard to generate completely impossible to read, highly
inefficient C that works.

<<Has anyone done any work to make the GCC back end generate 'C' code?  It
  seems that this might be beneficial
  to all ports that use the GCC back end.>>

The benefit of such a back end would be minimal. It would help a little bit
for bootstrapping GNAT, but that use would not justify the effort, which
would be comparable to doing a new port to a new architecture. I see no
respect in which this would be "beneficial to all ports ...".

No one ever expressed serious interest in such a project, but if they did,
it is certainly something that could be done. Perhaps a person year of
effort would be needed to complete such a project in a reasonably
productized manner. Remember that gcc is MUCH more flexible than C,
so there is no sense in which this would be anything like a direct
translation -- for example if you fed in C, out would come unreadable
rubbish.

The point is that when people ask for Ada to C conversion, they almost
always have in mind a translator that would produce human usable output.
A processor of the kind you suggest seems basically useless to me!