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Source-to-source compiler
A source-to-source translator, source-to-source compiler (S2S compiler), transcompiler, or transpiler is a type of translator that takes the source code of a program written in a programming language as its input and produces an equivalent source code in the same or a different programming language, usually as an intermediate representation. A source-to-source translator converts between programming languages that operate at approximately the same level of abstraction, while a traditional compiler translates from a higher level language to a lower level language. For example, a source-to-source translator may perform a translation of a program from Python to JavaScript, while a traditional compiler translates from a language like C to assembly or Java to bytecode. An automatic parallelizing compiler will frequently take in a high level language program as an input and then transform the code and annotate it with parallel code annotations (e.g., OpenMP) or language constructs (e.g. Fortran's forall statements).
Another purpose of source-to-source-compiling is translating legacy code to use the next version of the underlying programming language or an application programming interface (API) that breaks backward compatibility. It will perform automatic code refactoring which is useful when the programs to refactor are outside the control of the original implementer (for example, converting programs from Python 2 to Python 3, or converting programs from an old API to the new API) or when the size of the program makes it impractical or time-consuming to refactor it by hand.
Transcompilers may either keep translated code structure as close to the source code as possible to ease development and debugging of the original source code or may change the structure of the original code so much that the translated code does not look like the source code. There are also debugging utilities that map the transcompiled source code back to the original code; for example, the JavaScript Source Map standard[citation needed] allows mapping of the JavaScript code executed by a web browser back to the original source when the JavaScript code was, for example, minified or produced by a transcompiled-to-JavaScript language.[citation needed]
Examples include Closure Compiler, CoffeeScript, Dart, Haxe, Opal, TypeScript and Emscripten.
So called Assembly language translators are a class of source-to-source translators converting code from one assembly language into another, including (but not limited to) across different processor families and system platforms.
Intel marketed their 16-bit processor 8086 to be source compatible to the 8080, an 8-bit processor. To support this, Intel had an ISIS-II-based translator from 8080 to 8086 source code named CONV86 (also referred to as CONV-86 and CONVERT 86) available to OEM customers since 1978, possibly the earliest program of this kind. It supported multiple levels of translation and ran at 2 MHz on an Intel Microprocessor Development System MDS-800 with 8-inch floppy drives. According to user reports, it did not work very reliably.
Seattle Computer Products (SCP) offered TRANS86.COM, written by Tim Paterson in 1980 while developing 86-DOS. The utility could translate Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 assembly source code (with Zilog/Mostek mnemonics) into .ASM source code for the Intel 8086 (in a format only compatible with SCP's cross-assembler ASM86 for CP/M-80), but supported only a subset of opcodes, registers and modes, and often still required significant manual correction and rework afterwards. Also, performing only a mere transliteration, the brute-force single-pass translator did not carry out any register and jump optimizations. It took about 24 KB of RAM. The SCP version 1 of TRANS86.COM ran on Z80-based systems. Once 86-DOS was running, Paterson, in a self-hosting-inspired approach, utilized TRANS86 to convert itself into a program running under 86-DOS. Numbered version 2, this was named TRANS.COM instead. Later in 1982, the translator was apparently also available from Microsoft.
Also named TRANS86, Sorcim offered an 8080 to 8086 translator as well since December 1980. Like SCP's program it was designed to port CP/M-80 application code (in ASM, MAC, RMAC or ACT80 assembly format) to MS-DOS (in a format compatible with ACT86). In ACT80 format it also supported a few Z80 mnemonics. The translation occurred on an instruction-by-instruction basis with some optimization applied to conditional jumps. The program ran under CP/M-80, MP/M-80 and Cromemco DOS with a minimum of 24 KB of RAM, and had no restrictions on the source file size.
Source-to-source compiler
A source-to-source translator, source-to-source compiler (S2S compiler), transcompiler, or transpiler is a type of translator that takes the source code of a program written in a programming language as its input and produces an equivalent source code in the same or a different programming language, usually as an intermediate representation. A source-to-source translator converts between programming languages that operate at approximately the same level of abstraction, while a traditional compiler translates from a higher level language to a lower level language. For example, a source-to-source translator may perform a translation of a program from Python to JavaScript, while a traditional compiler translates from a language like C to assembly or Java to bytecode. An automatic parallelizing compiler will frequently take in a high level language program as an input and then transform the code and annotate it with parallel code annotations (e.g., OpenMP) or language constructs (e.g. Fortran's forall statements).
Another purpose of source-to-source-compiling is translating legacy code to use the next version of the underlying programming language or an application programming interface (API) that breaks backward compatibility. It will perform automatic code refactoring which is useful when the programs to refactor are outside the control of the original implementer (for example, converting programs from Python 2 to Python 3, or converting programs from an old API to the new API) or when the size of the program makes it impractical or time-consuming to refactor it by hand.
Transcompilers may either keep translated code structure as close to the source code as possible to ease development and debugging of the original source code or may change the structure of the original code so much that the translated code does not look like the source code. There are also debugging utilities that map the transcompiled source code back to the original code; for example, the JavaScript Source Map standard[citation needed] allows mapping of the JavaScript code executed by a web browser back to the original source when the JavaScript code was, for example, minified or produced by a transcompiled-to-JavaScript language.[citation needed]
Examples include Closure Compiler, CoffeeScript, Dart, Haxe, Opal, TypeScript and Emscripten.
So called Assembly language translators are a class of source-to-source translators converting code from one assembly language into another, including (but not limited to) across different processor families and system platforms.
Intel marketed their 16-bit processor 8086 to be source compatible to the 8080, an 8-bit processor. To support this, Intel had an ISIS-II-based translator from 8080 to 8086 source code named CONV86 (also referred to as CONV-86 and CONVERT 86) available to OEM customers since 1978, possibly the earliest program of this kind. It supported multiple levels of translation and ran at 2 MHz on an Intel Microprocessor Development System MDS-800 with 8-inch floppy drives. According to user reports, it did not work very reliably.
Seattle Computer Products (SCP) offered TRANS86.COM, written by Tim Paterson in 1980 while developing 86-DOS. The utility could translate Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 assembly source code (with Zilog/Mostek mnemonics) into .ASM source code for the Intel 8086 (in a format only compatible with SCP's cross-assembler ASM86 for CP/M-80), but supported only a subset of opcodes, registers and modes, and often still required significant manual correction and rework afterwards. Also, performing only a mere transliteration, the brute-force single-pass translator did not carry out any register and jump optimizations. It took about 24 KB of RAM. The SCP version 1 of TRANS86.COM ran on Z80-based systems. Once 86-DOS was running, Paterson, in a self-hosting-inspired approach, utilized TRANS86 to convert itself into a program running under 86-DOS. Numbered version 2, this was named TRANS.COM instead. Later in 1982, the translator was apparently also available from Microsoft.
Also named TRANS86, Sorcim offered an 8080 to 8086 translator as well since December 1980. Like SCP's program it was designed to port CP/M-80 application code (in ASM, MAC, RMAC or ACT80 assembly format) to MS-DOS (in a format compatible with ACT86). In ACT80 format it also supported a few Z80 mnemonics. The translation occurred on an instruction-by-instruction basis with some optimization applied to conditional jumps. The program ran under CP/M-80, MP/M-80 and Cromemco DOS with a minimum of 24 KB of RAM, and had no restrictions on the source file size.