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From: ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: PL/1 -> C translation
Message-ID: <4810@alice.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Jan-86 22:33:40 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.4810
Posted: Mon Jan 13 22:33:40 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Jan-86 00:28:47 EST
References: <776@lasspvax.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 26

> I have seen many requests for translaters going by recently, but I
> think my variation is novel:
>
>                Anyone out there doing **PL/1** to C??
> 
> I had to do a medium size conversion by hand last year. It took months
> to get all the bugs out. Nowe have to do a LARGE one (shudder).
>
> If I can't find such a translating program, there's a good chance we'll
> build it ourselves. (It becomes an interesting exercise when you include
> translations for nested procedures, label variables, non-local GOTOs,
> conditional handlers, etc etc. YES, those can all be done in C. With
> hair pulling. NO, I am NOT going to parse PL/1 macros.)
>
> I'm directing followups to net.lang...

Parsing PL/I macros is by far the easiest part of translating the
language.

I think that doing a full-fledged PL/I to C conversion is almost impossible.
Not completely impossible, just almost impossible -- about as hard as
translating PL/I into machine language.

Consider, for instance, translating something as simple as

	a = b;