Re: C to pascal, just this once

All,


I had a brief private discussion with the author, who sent me some samples.


Some of the code did not look nice. There are a variety of reasons
why converted code may not look as good as the original.


Old style function declarations. The translator has to assume worst
case. Using prototypes can make a big difference.


Macro that expand to complicated expressions. In this case source
that looks simple suddenly becomes complicated.


Mixing different types (not a problem in the code I saw). This causes
lots of casts to be generated, again a translator has to play safe.


Finally the target language will just look different. For instance
a return X has to be translated to 'func_name:=X ; exit', two statements
that may then need a begin/end pair.


A lot can be gained in any translation project by working on the original
source to help the translator. For instance, going the other way, unnesting
any Pascal procedures leads to a much cleaner translation to C.


In terms of effort. If you have less than 20,000 lines it is probably
better to rewrite manually. More than that and a translator will make
savings.

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