Re: compiler generators.

In article <1990Oct1.044328.8051@acc.stolaf.edu>, mike@thor.acc.stolaf.edu (Mike Haertel) writes:
> I beg to differ, but the bulk of the RTL generating pass of gcc is
> language-independent and takes a tree representation as its input.


Yes, this is what I remember also. But this leaves you with having to
generate the tree. As you you have pointed out, you have to
type-check the tree, also there are things like writing symbol tables and all
this really _boring_ stuff. The truth is, you don't have to generate RTL,
but a tree representation which can then be translated to RTL.


> [My impression is that the tree routines would need some work for languages
> that aren't semantically very similar to C, but I haven't looked very hard.
> -John]


Just what my impression is. In fact, there are hacks made by Michael
Tiemann to support C++. But maybe we can get some information from
somebody who is _writing_ a new front end?
It also seems to be necessary to hack some parts of gcc proper to
accomodate statically nested procedures and other things unknown in
C/C++.


Michael K. Gschwind, Institute for VLSI-Design, Technical University, Vienna
mike@vlsivie.at
mike@vlsivie.uucp
e182202@awituw01.bitnet
Voice: (++43).1.58801 8144
Fax: (++43).1.569697
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