Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!mintaka!spdcc!esegue!compilers-sender From: moss@cs.umass.edu (Eliot Moss) Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: compiler generators. Keywords: parse, code Message-ID: Date: 3 Oct 90 13:45:21 GMT References: <90255.105510VMDOS@tecmtyvm.mty.itesm.mx> <1852@tuvie> <1990Oct1.044328.8051@acc.stolaf.edu> Sender: compilers-sender@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us Reply-To: moss@cs.umass.edu (Eliot Moss) Organization: Dept of Comp and Info Sci, Univ of Mass (Amherst) Lines: 25 Approved: compilers@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us In-Reply-To: mike@thor.acc.stolaf.edu's message of 1 Oct 90 04:43:28 GMT I agree with Mike's comments, for the most part. We are doing the Modula-3 compiler based on gcc, and we did need a new parser and type checker, but can use most of the existing tree stuff. Since Modula-3 has constructs not expressible in C, a few modest extensions were required to the tree format, but not many. We will also need some back end extensions. These are required mostly for exception handling and garbage collection support. Some of it will be in gcc 2.0, since the extended C for that includes nested functions (which Pascal and Modula-* need for implementing their nested procedures) and exception handling (though Stallman may implement the exception handling for C differently from the way we have done for Modula-3). Further, the extensions we have made will not disturb the C compiler, so they will (after appropriate blessing by Stallman and associates) be incorporated into the base compiler (the .h files, etc.). Hope this clarifies the effort involved in getting new languages into the gcc framework .... Eliot -- J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor Department of Computer and Information Science Lederle Graduate Research Center University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 (413) 545-4206; Moss@cs.umass.edu -- Send compilers articles to compilers@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us {ima | spdcc | world}!esegue. Meta-mail to compilers-request@esegue.