RE: BCPL compiler with GCC

[Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>]

Tom Crick writes:
 > 
 > > Yes.  In fact, you could generate generic trees during parsing.
 > 
 > I think this may be the best way - I like the potential benefits of using
 > generic trees, even if if is just for the aesthetic quality.
 > 
 > > But you could convert BCPL to C instead.
 > 
 > Maybe - it wouldn't be so bad to knock up some Perl to convert the BCPL to C
 > and then just use GCC as normal, but I'd like it to be a fairly elegant
 > solution, plus I'd like to learn more about the GCC internals.
 > 
 > What are the major problems with writing a new frontend? Anything to avoid
 > when starting out?

Look at treelang to begin with.  

BCPL is such a simple language that generating generic trees from BCPL
parse trees ought to be quite straightforward.  It sounds fun.

Andrew.