Difference between revisions of "First Steps"
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When trying to identify the difficult parts of the Eiffel to C compilation it helps to analyze the differences between the two languages. The most important ones are enlisted here: | When trying to identify the difficult parts of the Eiffel to C compilation it helps to analyze the differences between the two languages. The most important ones are enlisted here: | ||
| − | *Melting ice technology (only for workbench code) | + | *Melting ice technology (only for workbench code), see [[Melting Ice Technology|link]] |
| − | *Eiffel supports objects | + | *Eiffel supports objects, see [[Object Layout|link]] |
| − | *Eiffel has garbage collection | + | *Eiffel has garbage collection, see [[Interfacing the GC|link]] |
| − | *Eiffel has dynamic binding | + | *Eiffel has dynamic binding, see [[Dynamic binding|link]] |
| − | *Eiffel supports generics | + | *Eiffel supports generics |
| − | *Eiffel supports closures, C only supports function pointers | + | *Eiffel supports closures, C only supports function pointers, [[Closures|link]] |
*Eiffel supports design by contract. | *Eiffel supports design by contract. | ||
Revision as of 12:18, 27 January 2007
Introduction
The source code of EiffelStudio was recently made open in a dual licensing model. This makes it possible for a broad group of developers to both learn from and extend the huge code base that embodies EiffelStudio. This article tries to give a good initial understanding behind the most basic ideas of the EiffelStudio implementation.
Overview
EiffelStudio is first and foremost a compiler that translates programs written in the Eiffel language into different output formats where one of them is C code. To study a translation process it is important to understand both the source and the target language. The former is of course a perquisite.
When trying to identify the difficult parts of the Eiffel to C compilation it helps to analyze the differences between the two languages. The most important ones are enlisted here:
- Melting ice technology (only for workbench code), see link
- Eiffel supports objects, see link
- Eiffel has garbage collection, see link
- Eiffel has dynamic binding, see link
- Eiffel supports generics
- Eiffel supports closures, C only supports function pointers, link
- Eiffel supports design by contract.
Of course the languages have other differences too, Eiffel has the from loop construct whereas C has the for and while constructs. But this stuff is very easily translated.
For all these features, that the Eiffel languages supports as opposed to the C language runtime mechanisms are needed to support them at the C level.
