Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!convex!killer!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-pcd!hplsla!jima
From: jima@hplsla.HP.COM (              Jim Adcock)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: An Objective-C to C++ Translator
Message-ID: <6590060@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 28 Jul 88 18:19:01 GMT
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 23

I have an Objective-C to C++ "translation aid" that I'm willing to make
available on an "unsupported public domain" basis to strongly motivated
users.

The translator reduces by maybe a factor of 10X the amount of time
required to translate software from Objective-C to C++.

Unlike some language translators, this one chooses not to do a flawless
job of translating, but rather emphasizes not messing up the original
naming conventions, indentations, and commenting schemes.  This leaves
some final manual clean up work to the user.  On the positive side, the
resulting code looks like real code, not some kind of gibberish.

The potential user should have a fair chunk of code that needs to be 
translated -- say more than 10 classes, should be quite knowledgable in
C++ and Objective-C, and should have some idea of the difficulties and
limitations involved in language translation.  The translator is implemented
in K+R C code which should be relatively portable, but may take a day
or two's work to get running on a new machine.  Finally, the potential user
should realize that using the translator is not going to be a very useful
way to compare the relative merits of Objective-C and C++.

This tool is not flawless, but has proven to be useful to some people.