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From: marti@antares.inf.ethz.ch
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Intermediate Representation
Keywords: optimize, C
Message-ID: <1990Aug13.214614.16644@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
Date: 13 Aug 90 21:46:14 GMT
References: <1990Aug07.153407.8877@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
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In article <1990Aug07.153407.8877@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
napi@rangkom.MY (Mohd Hanafiah b. Abdullah) writes:
>I would like know what people think is the best Intermediate Representation
>(IR) to be used for highly effective optimizations and code generation, and
>it should be portable.

Many language designers/implementors have turned to using C as an intermediate
representation language, for example in the following research projects and/or
products:

- C++ translator from AT&T (cfront)
- portable Cedar compiler developed at Xerox PARC
- Eiffel compiler from ISE
- Modula-3 compilers developed at DEC SRC and the (now defunct?) Olivetti
  Research Center

Compilation speed using C as an IRL may not be overwhelming, but this solution
is certainly portable.  Of course, the quality of the generated machine code
depends substantially on on the C compiler used as a backend.

--
Robert Marti                        Phone:    +41 1 254 72 60
Institut fur Informationssysteme
ETH-Zentrum                         Internet: marti@inf.ethz.ch
CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland         UUCP:     ...uunet!mcvax!ethz!marti
[Probably not what the original author had in mind, but a good thought
nonetheless. -John]
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