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From: staff@cadlab.sublink.org (Alex Martelli)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Intermediate Representation
Keywords: optimize, C, Fortran
Message-ID: <250@cadlab.sublink.ORG>
Date: 18 Aug 90 05:43:34 GMT
References: <1990Aug07.153407.8877@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> <1990Aug13.214614.16644@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
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Reply-To: staff@cadlab.sublink.org (Alex Martelli)
Organization: CAD.LAB, Bologna, Italia
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Approved: compilers@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us

marti@antares.inf.ethz.ch writes:

>Many language designers/implementors have turned to using C as an
>intermediate representation language, for example in the following research
>projects and/or
[...omitted for brevity...]
>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.

...and don't forget Fortran... (see my msg of today in comp.lang.fortran-
f2c + Sun's cc produce code which runs almost twice as fast as Sun's
f77, for a strictly numerical code -2d complex fft- on a Sparcstation 1!).
-- 
Alex Martelli - CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Stalingrado 45, Bologna, Italia
Email: (work:) staff@cadlab.sublink.org, (home:) alex@am.sublink.org
Phone: (work:) ++39 (51) 371099, (home:) ++39 (51) 250434; 
Fax: ++39 (51) 366964 (work only; any time of day or night).
[I knew that Sun's f77 wasn't great, but that's embarassing. -John]
-- 
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