OpenEuphoria

1. Euphoria To C Translator Crappiness?

• Posted by John Cage <drcage2000 at YAHOO.COM> Jan 25, 2001
• 514 views

When I did that masquerade with U4IA+ to get Rob to
create a Eu To C translator (before the MTS era Rob
thought, based on the mailing list archive, that the
only way to create a Euphoria Compiler would be to
write a Eu To Machine Code compiler, with Linker,
Debugger, etc. wich is too hard and unportable).
I proposed it because of the following reasons;
1. Eu programs would run nearly as fast as compiled C
2. Eu programs would be portable to various other
platforms
3. Eu DLLs and static libraries could be created for
C/Pascal/Etc. programmers to use
4. Eu could call C routines in DOS32 too


Let's see if Rob implemented these, shall we?
Nr 1.
Eu programs run a few percentages faster in some
cases, and slower in other cases.
Eu programs, when compiled to C, are still 10 to 14
times slower than an equivalent hand-written C
programs.
I have extensive benchmarks to proove this.
The reason for this is unknown to me.
The only thing I see is a lot of overhead in the code
produced, due to run-time routines for memory
handling, etc. being called. The way EC writes C code
is in a fashion wich is very difficult for the C
compiler to optimise.
A total rewrite of code output should be considered.

Nr 2.
Eu programs can still only run on Linux, Dos32, and
Win32.
Compiling the C code produced with C compilers for
other platforms is impossible.
This is because your program needs to link to
EC*.lib/EC*.a at compile time.
I expected ROb's translator to produce C source only.
So we can simply port some routines to other platforms
and voila! There's our Euphoria program running on
your little brother's Playstation.
I think this is partialy my fault.
I did not explain very well just *how* to translate to
C.

Nr 3.
It's obvious that we can't create DLLs and static
libraries in Euphoria.
This is a big shame, as it was the prime reason for
writing a Eu To C translator...

Nr 4.
Eu programs can't call C routines in DOS32 using teh
translator.
I wrote this buggy crap-ass tool for doing so once,
but since 99% of the people here don't run MTS
executables for some childish fear of it being ifected
with a virus (a virus! Help me Peter Norton! Savezz
Meezz!!). Ever hear of a "Virus Scan" ?


So in conclusion, what *did* the translator bring to
us Eu coders?

The awnser is 'A few percentages faster execution'.
That's it.
Woopedeedoo!
Let's pay 30 bucks for that!
No w8!
With 3 cents I can overclock my computer and get the
same results!
YEAH!



Mike The Spike

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