Simula front-end

[knutroy at ifi dot uio dot no (Knut Aksel Røysland )]

Hi!

I have recently started working on my master project which will
include development of a Simula front-end for GCC. I plan to base my
work partly on Cim[1] which outputs C code and then asks an available
C compiler to take it from there.

By removing the intermediate C stage and instead let the new front-end
produce the tree structures expected by the GBE (GCC Back-End), I hope
to see some gain in efficiency. Hopefully, the produced code will also
be easier to debug, as it reflects better upon the actual Simula
source code and not some intermediate C source.

My supervisor is Stein Krogdahl[2] who has participated in earlier
implementations of Simula compilers, including Cim. My project has
also been "blessed" by Ole-Johan Dahl[3], one of the men behind
Simula, the first object-oriented language. Now it is up to me to show
myself worthy of this task.

As part of the introductory course for master students at my
department, I had to write a short essay describing my planned
project. My essay also includes a few pages describing, very
superficially, the GBE interface. If anyone cares to take a look at
it, you may find it at:
http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~knutroy/gsc/essay.ps

The project is still in an early stage. Therefore I am wondering if
anyone has any relevant information that might be of interest to me.
This may be anything from information on the tree structures of the
GBE interface (besides the source code itself), to references to
front-end projects for languages that are conceptually similar to
Simula.

Responses are very much appreciated.

Thanks for your attention.

Sincerely,
  Knut Aksel Røysland,
  Department of Informatics, University of Oslo

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[1] http://www.ifi.uio.no/~cim/cim.html
[2] http://www.ifi.uio.no/~steinkr/
[3] http://www.ifi.uio.no/~olejohan/