Re: transpiling to low level C

On 15/12/2024 20:53, BGB wrote:

On 12/15/2024 3:32 PM, bart wrote:

On 15/12/2024 19:08, Bonita Montero wrote:

C++ is more readable because is is magnitudes more expressive than C.
You can easily write a C++-statement that would hunddres of lines in
C (imagines specializing a unordered_map by hand). Making a language
less expressive makes it even less readable, and that's also true for
your reduced C.
>

>
That's not really the point of it. This reduced C is used as an intermediate language for a compiler target. It will not usually be read, or maintained.
>
An intermediate language needs to at a lower level than the source language.
>
And for this project, it needs to be compilable by any C89 compiler.
>
Generating C++ would be quite useless.
>

 As an IL, even C is a little overkill, unless turned into a restricted subset (say, along similar lines to GCC's GIMPLE).
 Say:
   Only function-scope variables allowed;
   No high-level control structures;
   ...
 Say:
   int foo(int x)
   {
     int i, v;
     for(i=x, v=0; i>0; i--)
       v=v*i;
     return(v);
   }
 Becoming, say:
   int foo(int x)
   {
     int i;
     int v;
     i=x;
     v=0;
     if(i<=0)goto L1;
     L0:
     v=v*i;
     i=i-1;
     if(i>0)goto L0;
     L1:
     return v;
   }
 ...
 

I have considered to remove loops and keep only goto.
But I think this is not bring too much simplification.