[antlr-interest] philosophy about translation

[Jim O'Connor]

Hi All,
	Cool discussion.  How does the concept of a generic language or
AST fit?  The generic AST is the universe of all possible language
constructs.  
Andy has the transformations like

>>ADD v1 TO v2. --> v2 += v1;
>>ADD v1 v2 TO v3 v4. --> v3 += v1 + v2; v4 += v1 + v2
>>ADD v1 TO v2 GIVING v3.  --> v3 = v1 + v2;

This concentrates on transforming COBOL to Java.  (Ha, ha, "I don't want
JOBOL!")

The generic language would add another step:

COBOL -> generic language -> JAVA. In the general case, any specific
language -> generic language.  Generic language -> any specific
language.


ADD v1 to v2 -> 
(G_ASSIGNMENT (MOD_VAR v2) (OPER_ADD (REF_VAR v1) (REF_VAR v2)))

The "COBOL to generic process" focuses on the "make generic" process.  I
can't make JOBOL because I'm making generic.  The "generic to JAVA"
makes classes, main methods, file reads etc... from generic.  

What if a generic construct cannot be handled by a specific language?
This is tough question.  It is an easier question than "How do I
translate a Java class to COBOL?"

I'll stop there for now.

Generic language == textual object code??

Jim

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