• Dmitry Sychov <accelware accelware.com> May 30 2009
• grauzone <none example.net> May 30 2009
• bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> May 30 2009
• Frits van Bommel <fvbommel REMwOVExCAPSs.nl> May 30 2009
• Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> Jun 28 2009

Dmitry Sychov <accelware accelware.com> writes:

Hello,

Can D compiler be used only as a C++ preprocessor, that it to generate  C++
output (platform independent) to be later compiled via the target platform C++
compiler?

Thanks, Dmitry

grauzone <none example.net> writes:

 Can D compiler be used only as a C++ preprocessor, that it to generate  C++
output (platform independent) to be later compiled via the target platform C++
compiler?


No.

bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:

Dmitry Sychov:
 Can D compiler be used only as a C++ preprocessor, that it to generate  C++
output (platform independent) to be later compiled via the target platform C++
compiler?


It may be possible to induce LDC to output C code.

Bye,
bearophile

Frits van Bommel <fvbommel REMwOVExCAPSs.nl> writes:

bearophile wrote:
 Dmitry Sychov:
 Can D compiler be used only as a C++ preprocessor, that it to generate  C++
output (platform independent) to be later compiled via the target platform C++
compiler?


 It may be possible to induce LDC to output C code.


With the LLVM C backend linked in it might come close to working. There are
some 
issues with this, though.

First of all, the C backend is a bit out of date. LLVM has started turning some 
stuff into large integers (> 64 bits), and last I heard the C backend can't 
handle those properly. (Other backends handle them just fine since pretty much 
only bitwise operations are generated for them, not more tricky stuff like 
multiplication and division)

Second, it still won't be platform independent, which was what Dmitry asked
for. 
This is because LLVM doesn't see the code until templates are instantiated, 
mixins are mixed in, static ifs and versions have been evaluated, and so on.

Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:

Sat, 30 May 2009 04:16:09 -0400, Dmitry Sychov wrote:

 Can D compiler be used only as a C++ preprocessor, that it to
 generate  C++ output (platform independent) to be later compiled via
 the target platform C++ compiler? 


I'm sure translation from D into C were discussed before, not even once,
as a means of diversifying the list of supported platforms.  The culprit
was exception handling.  The conversion to C++ were discussed too IIRC,
but not as enthusiastically for some reason.  I cannot think of any real
blockers for such a `preprocessor'.  Maybe forward references, but the
current D compiler has problems with them as well.