XPost: alt.folklore.computers   
   From: antispam@fricas.org   
      
   In alt.folklore.computers rbowman  wrote:   
   > On Tue, 6 Jan 2026 21:00:25 -0500, c186282 wrote:   
   >   
   >>    Clearly the GCC collection is More Complicated than I thought.   
   >   
   > Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth it was the GNU C Compiler. Then it   
   > learned new tricks.   
   >   
   > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_transfer_language   
   >   
      
   >   
   >>    But I'm still not sure I'll call them 'compilers'   
   >>    in the older sense of the word. Some intermediate term is required.   
   >   
   > That would be RTL. Microsoft's CIL is similar but depends on a runtime.   
   > CLang//LLVM is another approach which overlaps GCC. fwiw I have both on   
   > this box.   
   >   
   > IRs have been used for a long, long time.   
   >   
   > https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/2480741.2480743   
   >   
   > Some light reading:   
   >   
   > https://archive.org/details/principlesofcomp0000ahoa/mode/2up   
      
   RTL is old thing.  It is still used in gcc, but about 20 years   
   ago gcc introduced GIMPLE and IIUC it is now used for main   
   processing.  Front ends do what they want, then this is   
   conveted to GIMPLE, optimizers work on GIMPLE, and finally   
   GIMPLE is converted to RTL which is used to generate assebly.   
   The point here is that most of work is in optimizers, they   
   are language independent and mostly target independent   
   (there is a buch of target macros that affects work of   
   optimizers).   
      
   --   
                                 Waldek Hebisch   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)