Re: [Tinycc-devel] Can be extended for C++?

[Chris Lattner]

On Oct 15, 2007, at 2:59 AM, Ivo wrote:

> On Monday 15 October 2007 11:31, Sanghyeon Seo wrote:
> > 2007/10/15, ShangHongzhang 62185 <address@hidden>:
> > > Is it possible to extend the TCC for supporting C++ syntax parsing?
> > > I think it must be very hard to do so, isn't it?
> >
> > I think it would be impossibly hard to do so.
>
> Yes. The code generator is intertwined with the parser. Also, I  
> seem to
> remember reading somewhere that a single pass C++ compiler is  
> impossible
> due to the nature of the language. tcc is a single pass compiler.
>
> Perhaps you could put a C++-to-C compiler in front of tcc. Such  
> code can
> still be found on the net. IIRC the very first C++ implementation  
> was done
> like that (cfront plus a normal C-compiler). Later on, certain
> C++ "features" were nearly impossible to translate and they moved  
> on to a
> dedicated C++ compiler. Perhaps "they" have overcome these problems  
> because
> LLVM is able to generate C from C++.

Converting C++ to C is just as hard as parsing C++ in the first  
place.  Also (FWIW) the LLVM C++ to C support does not produce "human  
readable" C code, it produces really ugly low-level C code that uses  
gotos etc.  It also depends on llvm-gcc.

You might be interested in http://clang.llvm.org though, which does  
not depend on GCC at all.  But its C++ support is just starting.

-Chris