Re: Building a translator. Want to know if this is feasible...

"socrates" <socrates171@yahoo.com> wrote
> What I have is very minimal. No compiler for the dead language, no
> text books, only one reference manual and hundreds of program codes
> that used the dead language.
>
> Do you think it's possible to build a translator with such minimal
> resources? And could you give me some pointers on how to start
> building a translator?


This is certainly possible, although translating to a language like C
is probably a better approach (it would be simpler to add C++ or Java
wrappers around the generated C). Here would be a high level approach:


1) Perform an extensive code walkthrough and determine the system level
      functions used and make a list.


2) Create a grammar specification for DL (the dead language) and verify
      the same by parsing the existing DL programs


3) Create a C library for functions identified in (1)


4) Create a translator that uses the grammar from (2) and generates
      the equivalent C code.


A good test for (4) is to build a reverse translator to check that
the generated C code (using library functions from 3) can be translated
back to the original DL (may not always be feasible).


Naturally, there can be a trade-off between steps 3 and 4 (more functions
in the library would decrease the complexity of the translator).


Regards,
gopi
---


Gopi Kumar Bulusu
Sankhya Technologies Private Limited
http://www.sankhya.com
Tel: +91 44 822 7358
Fax: +91 44 822 7357

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