# Damn Fool idea for the Day...

## John Carter — 2005-06-26 22:14:06

    gcc 4.* has a new optimizing back end.

    For a c compiler, it is a remarkably "functional" type notion.

    It's called tree-ssa. Basically the intermediate representation is a

    static single assignment form. For a good intro, see...

       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_single_assignment_form

    So my damn fool notion for the day is, it would be really easy to take an

    SSA representation and write a back end to that that outputs Joy or some

    other concatenative language. ie. You then have a

    C/Fortran/Java/Pascal/Ada/C++ compiler to a concatenative language.

    And maybe write a frontend that reads Joy / some other concatenative

    language and outputs ssa.

    Or tie the two together and you have a C/Fortran/Ada/Java/C++/... compiler

    again.

    Perhaps putting an analysis & optimization rewriting pass in while it is

    in the concatenative language.

    As I said, it's a damn fool idea that will go nowhere but waste ypour

    time.

    But fun.

    John Carter                             Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639

    Tait Electronics                        Fax   : (64)(3) 359 4632

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    Carter's Clarification of Murphy's Law.

    "Things only ever go right so that they may go more spectacularly wrong later."

    From this principle, all of life and physics may be deduced.