f2p, c2p

Fri, 24 Nov 1995 17:24:49 +0100 (MEZ)

Hello, folks!

Only one small question/suggestion:  Does there exist a f2p or c2p
translator program which translates Fortran resp. C source to Pascal
source?  If not, I suggest that somebody writes it because of the
following reasons:

  - Practical reason:  It would be nice to import libraries written
    in C, C++ or Fortran automatically.  For most purposes, it would
    be sufficient to have a program which ports C header files to
    Pascal Unit (Module) interfaces.

  - Psychological reason:  The existence of a c2p would demonstrate
    that Pascal is at least as powerful as C.  The existence of a p2c
    (which does in fact *not* support everything which is possible in
    Borland Pascal -- I am thinking of the Object extensions) is ac-
    cepted by many people as a "proof" that C would be superior to 
    Pascal, so we should "proove" the opposite direction. :-)

I am almost sure that at least the c2p program does not exist because
Standard Pascal has indeed less abilities than C.  However, you can
do everything which is possible in C with GNU Pascal (including e.g.
pointer arithmetics -- just do a type cast to Integer), so the main
difficulty will be to *understand* the C source, not to translate it.
C++ could be more complicated as long as GNU Pascal does not (yet) have
multiple inheritance.  For Fortran, I don't see any problems, since
there are complex numbers in GNU (Extended) Pascal, but one should
translate goto statements to structured statements wherever possible..

One idea how to write it:  Just use the front-ends of the GNU compi-
lers and replace the assembler back-end by a Pascal back-end.  Once
you have understood how the front-end passes information to the
back-end, the job will be straightforward.  (One could even easily
generalize it to a general x2y translator ...! :-)

I have not the time to do it myself :-( so I ask *you* if you are
willing to do this important contribution.

Yours,

    Peter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dipl. Phys. Peter Gerwinski
Fachbereich Physik
Universitaet-GH Essen                   Phone:  +49-201-183-2763
D-45117 Essen                           Fax:    +49-201-183-2120
Germany                                 e-mail: pege@mail.theo-phys.uni-essen.de
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter Gerwinski (pege@rs1.Theo-Phys.Uni-Essen.DE)