Re: Are transpiling techniques different than compiling techniques?

I have - long time ago - written al Algol 60 to C translator.
Not one where "some intermediate machine" is defined and implemented in C,
but each Algol 60 construct is mapped upon - hopefully - semantically
equivalent C constructs.


Looking at the translation process it is just a simplified compiler,
which a parser, a scan for name resolution, a scan to generate an
include file and a scan to map Algol procedures to C procedures.


Apart from handling by name parameters, to be mapped into (almost)
parameterless procedures, to function parameters (in Algol one does
not specify the parameter profile of a formal procedure parameter) and
- to a certain extent - switches and labels as parameter, it is fairly
straight forward (extensive description is available, see "
https://github.com/JvanKatwijk/algol-60-compiler).


I would not give it another name than translator or compiler.


Of course mapping any language to any other language may give
problems, in the 80-ies we made a subset A60 to Ada translator, and
direct mapping of by name parameters and things like non-local gotos
is not well possible (but then, the programs that needed to be
translated was simply structured, apart from a few goto's no big
problems)


jan






Op di 12 okt. 2021 om 17:18 schreef Detlef Meyer-Eltz <
Meyer-Eltz@t-online.de>:


> I'm working for years on the Delphi to C++ translater "Delphi2Cpp",
> without beeing aware, that this kind of software is called a "transpiler".
> [ by some people ]

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