[3213] in java-interest
Re: JavaBASIC, JavaPascal
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Elliotte Rusty Harold)
Fri Nov 3 11:53:47 1995
From: "Elliotte Rusty Harold" <Elliotte@blackstar.com>
To: David Gardiner <david.gardiner@unisa.edu.au>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 1995 10:19:41 EST
Reply-To: Elliotte@blackstar.com
Cc: java-interest@java.sun.com
> It occurred to me the other day. Why can't we develop compilers that
> use the Java object format, but use different source languages?
>
> A C++ based language is quite powerful, but there would be benefits
> in providing a 'BASIC' related language. cf. the popularity of
> Visual Basic programming.
>
Basic isn't very standard. First you'd need to define the version of
Basic you were trying to provide. I certainly think it would be
possible to provide a GW-Basic to Java translator. Similarly an ANSI
F77 to Java translator should also be possible. By extension a Basic
compiler that produced java byte codes should also be possible.
However some extensions to these languages would not be portable to
Java because of Java's security features. Furthermore code produced
by these translators could in general only produce Java applications,
not applets.
C, C++ and Pascal would not be good candidates for translation to
Java, however, because of their heavy reliance on pointers and
pointer arithmetic. To implement them in Java you would need to
create your own virtual machine inside of Java's virtual machine in
which pointer arithmetic and unsafe type casting was possible,
not a particularly easy or efficient.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold Black Star Publishing Co., Inc.
elliotte@blackstar.com 116 East 27th Street
elharo@escape.com NY NY 10016
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