Re: [open-cobol-list] Daydreaming about another language to emit

[Charles Anthony]

On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 8:14 AM, Brian Tiffin <address@hidden> wrote:

Charles;   LLVM.  We do clang.  Build compiler with clang, generated
code compiled with clang.  All worked first try.  One small compiler
switch change meant ALL the make check passes as well.
http://opencobol.add1tocobol.com/#does-opencobol-work-with-llvm

As the original poster was discussing removing the C interface altogether, I was positing COBOL --> LLVM directly. In an abstract sense this is good as LLVM is targeted as a compiler back-end, as opposed to C which is powerful enough to be used as a compiler back-end.

Be clear, I am not criticizing OpenCOBOL's implementation, I am just doing what-if games. If I was tasked with with the job of reworking OpenCOBOL with the express intent of replacing the C back-end, I would advocate LLVM. (To some extent because I've used it a write compilers). 

Also, the original question  seemed to seeking more information about the engineering aspects of different approaches, so I was recommending that he read about LLVM to better understand the compiler back-end problem space.