Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!cunixf.cc.columbia.edu!shenkin
From: shenkin@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Peter S. Shenkin)
Subject: Re: F90 compiler from NAG
Message-ID: <1991Jun24.211203.16291@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1991 21:12:03 GMT

In article <1991Jun24.163115.13507@convex.com> psmith@convex.com (Presley Smith) writes:
>Seens to me to be a translator. 
>
>  - Since a "compiler" is a "computer program used to compile"
>
>  - AND the definition of "compile" is to "translate a higher order
>    language program into it's relocatable or absolute machine code 
>    equivalent"... 
>
> Since the NAG product produces C code as output, NOT relocatable or
> absolute machine code or equivalent... 
>
...
>
>If it produces C code as output, that would fit with the definition
>of a translator...
>
>If the NAG product is a compiler, then we need to change the standard
>definitions.   In my mind, it's a translator.  

By your criterion, any "compiler" which first produces some intermediate
code -- perhaps shared by several language-specific  front ends -- would be 
not a compiler but a translator.  This includes Convex's Fortran and C 
products, I believe.  But, you may object, the entire process taken together, 
including what is unequivocally a "compilation" of the intermediate code into 
assembler or machine language is certainly compilation;  well, then,
the entire process of running the NAG "whatever-it-is", then doing
"whatever-you-call-it" to the resulting C program is also compilation.
And come to think about it, is a process which takes Fortran and produces
assembler a "compiler", by this definition?  I guess not.

Why can't it be both a translator and a compiler?  Except that one USUALLY
thinks of a translator (as in APL or BASIC) as something that executes
lines one by one, without an intermediate "compilation" stage.  Come to think
of it, if you increase the number of intermediate stages that the code has
to go through, maybe it's really even more of a compiler, and less of a 
translator.

	Philosophically and psycho-semantically yours,
	-P.
************************f*u*cn*rd*ths*u*cn*gt*a*gd*jb**************************
Peter S. Shenkin, Department of Chemistry, Barnard College, New York, NY  10027
(212)854-1418  shenkin@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu(Internet)  shenkin@cunixf(Bitnet)
***"In scenic New York... where the third world is only a subway ride away."***