why C as target language of a translator?

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Hi Can anyone please tell me the advantage of using C as the target language of a source to source compiler?
Thanks.

Posted 26-Dec-12 23:54pm

suleman115

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Andreas Gieriet 27-Dec-12 22:48pm

What is a source to source compiler?
Is it e.g. C# --> Java via C?
Or is it simple some language (e.g. C#) to C?
Andi

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Solution 2

C is a fairly simple language in terms of structure and syntax. Unfortunately it also lacks many of the features that are useful in modern development.

Posted 27-Dec-12 0:24am

Richard MacCutchan

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rdlph 8-Oct-18 21:57pm

This answer does not address the question correctly. The question is about the target language (what is emitted during compilation) of a compiler. Not the implementation language; the one used to actually write the compiler itself.

Richard MacCutchan 9-Oct-18 3:56am

Why did you wait six years just to make this rather pointless comment?

rdlph 9-Oct-18 9:11am

What is 'rather pointless' about it? And what does the age of the answer have to do with anything? I assure you I didn't wait 6 years to make this comment. I made it immediately after reading your answer.

Richard MacCutchan 9-Oct-18 11:23am

Well you must have searched jolly hard to find a six year old question, that no one (even the OP) has any interest in. The person who posted it has not been active here for years, and probably did nothing about the information provided. So, as I say, a rather pointless comment.

Solution 3

Thank you for your answers, actually it is an exercise in my subject compilers. So i needed to know some reasonable answer. What i can think as an answer is, if someone needs a code in C but doesn't know it, he can use this translator to code in some other known language and translate it. But this answer I consider childish. What do you think?

Posted 27-Dec-12 15:51pm

suleman115

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 19-May-13 13:52pm

Not an answer.
—SA

Solution 5

check out here :

http://latest-technology-guide.blogspot.in/2012/12/c-language-advantages-and-disadvantages.html[^]

Posted 30-Dec-12 23:21pm

compad

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This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Andreas Gieriet · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-28T10:35:00

Assuming you talk about a "compiler" that uses C as a backend language (like the early C++ compilers did), then there are several good reasons for this:

C compilers are available for any platform -> your language is available on any platform and architecture where C is available
C compilers can agressively optimize -> you do not have to care any register allocation, common sub-expression elimination, loop unrolling, etc.
C language is easier to understand than any "proprietary" intermediate language

The cons are the additional compilation step for the C compiler. But that is easily balanced for a student project by the above mentioned benefits.

Cheers
Andi

**Zoltán Zörgő** · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-27T00:18:00

No. language translation (more in case if the machine languages, than in case of spoken ones) is a complicated text manipulation. Indifferent of what language you use, you will need text processing tools like regular expression, lexers, dictionaries and so on. These are not the highlights of the plain old C. Of course, using C you will make a small and probably fast tool - if you don't mess it up, which can have a higher likelihood with C, than with C# for example, if you have to make your text processing tools on your own. So in general I would note recommend C for that as first approach. The same logic in C# would be a smaller and maintainable code, faster developement, but larger footprint in resource consumption, and would probably run much slower.
But that's only one opinion.

why C as target language of a translator?

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