Re: Looking for awk compiler - Awk2C ?

Andrew Shao-Chun Huang <ahuang@bach.ece.cmu.edu> writes:
>Does anyone know of a compiler for the awk language?


Perhaps someone else knows, but I believe there is a program called awk2c
which 'compiles' awk code into C code.


On a general compilers question, is this kind of program a good idea? If
you have a program written in one language, is it reasonable to implement
the language by writing a 'compiler' that converts it into C ?


It seems to me that if the original language made a lot of assumptions the
same way that C does, (null terminated strings, i/o as a function call,
large flat address space, no function definitions within other functions,
etc. ) that this would be a Good Thing.


But a language that doesn't make some of these same decisions the same way
would have a lot of overhead.


I know there has to be some experience out on the 'net, since there are to
my knowledge (only by reading the net, I don't know the ftp sites):
Awk to C
Basic to C
C++ to C
C To C (K&R -> ANSI , ANSI -> K&R)
Eiffel to C
Fortran to C
Lisp to C
Modula to C
Pascal to C
Scheme to C


Some of these originating languages make a LOT of decisions differently
than C does. It seems that the generated C code can't be very good unless
there is some kind of Code analysis in the individual language to make the
best match to C data structures.


Anyone know more than I do?
David (whitten@fwva.saic.com) US:(619)535-7764
--

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.