[Info-vax] The Kotlin language, something for VMS as well?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2017-07-13, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/13/2017 12:00 PM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>> 
>> I'm sure you could use the same idea to set up compilers that produce 
>> code for the JVM, but I doubt if that could or should be done by 
>> building a new back-end.
>
> I thought the backend was the part of the compiler that generated
> the code for a particular architecture? If not, just what do people
> consider the backend?
>

Front end: The part of the compiler which parses the source code and
makes sure the source code complies with the language rules. If it
does, the source code is turned into a standard intermediate
representation (IR) which is the same regardless of target architecture
or target OS.

Back end: Takes the IR code, optimises it, and then passes it to
a target specific module which generates the actual object code
for the requested target. Note that this requested target can also
be an interpreter instead of actual binary code intended for
direct execution on a physical machine.

LLVM implements all of the back end and provides routines which you
can call from your front end to generate the IR. The front end author
is responsible for writing the language parser itself; there is no
support in LLVM for this. This parser can be whatever you want it
to be, ranging from a hand-written LL(1) parser to a generated parser.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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