UD046803@NDSUVM1.BITNET (01/22/88)
Well, I just received the Turbo Pascal to QuickC Translator and very anxious to
try it out. So I write a trivial Pascal program and it translates without any
problem. And then I compile with my Microsoft C compiler. And it RUN with no
problem. Wow what A GOOD PRODUCT!! But WAIT! WHAT?? The EXE file that the
C compiler generate is a whopping 95K in size compare to 11K for the good old
Turbo Pascal COM file. And that is not what I want for a translator. I want
to write in C because I want faster execution and more compact code, not
something like this.
It turns out it didn't really translate to microsoft C, instead it translate to
a whole bunch of turbo pascal call. And then you link you basic C program to
the turbo Pascal-C library. Also due to compatibility problem between C and
Turbo Pascal (4 byte data and code pointer), you need to compile the resulted
C prorgam using large Model. And why would I want to compile a small model
Pascal program into large model C program without having any benefit.
What I want(?) is a translator which translate to pure microsoft C code or any
C code use their own C library, not another set of library.
May be I should rewrite to C by myself instead of using the translator. Being
a good C programmer myself, I think that is the logical thing to do. The
translator should ease the pain of novice programmer who want to translate
Pascal to C.
Don't take me wrong, I think Microsoft are releasing the translator in good
faith, but it just didn't work out for the majority of C programmer.
Is anybody have something to say about the translator?
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Should we wait for the 80986 or shouldn't we??? Or should we go for the 68090?
Larry Siu ....... UD046803@NDSUVM1asjoshi@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Amit S. Joshi) (01/22/88)
Hello,
Just a (hopefully useful) note on pascal to C translators : How does the
beast you have perform when the pascal program uses variant records and
passes them around as parameters ? I have found that most translators
break on this. There is a translator that is rather large (it actually
parses the Pascal program completely and then produces a C program based
on the parse tree) which is very good. It was released to the net by Pat
Bergen (?) of Hollistic Technologies. Yous should try that. It however
translates standard Pascal (ISO I think) to K&R C.
--
Amit Joshi BITNET | Q3696@PUCC.BITNET
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