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From: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Basic for NeXT
Message-ID: <328@heaven.woodside.ca.us>
Date: 21 Nov 90 07:54:22 GMT
References: <742@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> <59@lion.cs.utexas.edu> <11384@milton.u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid)
Organization: RightBrain Software, Woodside, CA
Lines: 31

In article <11384@milton.u.washington.edu> cyliao@hardy.acs.washington.edu (Chun-Yao Liao) writes:
>>In article <1990Nov13.054856.2988@utstat.uucp> philip@utstat.uucnough) writes:

>>Sort of.  There is a BASIC that comes a s an example of p2c translator.
>>I guess it was a BASIC system written in pascal. The p2c translate the
>
>The only problem I have with this is why would you want to translate?
>If you are going to translate BASIC to Pascal and then to C, you kind of miss
>the point of BASIC anyway (or one of the main points).  BASIC is interepreted
>(usually).

The BASIC interpreter is written in Pascal.  Interpreters are programs,
too.  The p2c program translates the BASIC interpreter from Pascal to C,
but when you compile it in either language, it's still a BASIC interpreter.

Substitute a word like "spreadsheet" for "BASIC interpreter" if you still
don't get it.

Another way to look at it is that you get the source code to the BASIC
interpreter, and you can either leave it as Pascal source or translate
it to C source, but the code does the same thing in either case (acts
as a BASIC interpreter.

Pretty confusing, these languages within languages, eh?  Not to mention
that even the C source gets translated into 680x0 instructions before
you're done with it, which loses all of the advantages of BASIC :-)

-- 
 Glenn Reid				RightBrain Software
 glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us		PostScript/NeXT developers
 ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn		415-851-1785