An Objective-C to C++ Translator

[Jim Adcock]

I have an Objective-C to C++ "translation aid" that I'm willing to make
available on an "unsupported public domain" basis to strongly motivated
users.

The translator reduces by maybe a factor of 10X the amount of time
required to translate software from Objective-C to C++.

Unlike some language translators, this one chooses not to do a flawless
job of translating, but rather emphasizes not messing up the original
naming conventions, indentations, and commenting schemes. This leaves
some final manual clean up work to the user. On the positive side, the
resulting code looks like real code, not some kind of gibberish.

The potential user should have a fair chunk of code that needs to be
translated -- say more than 10 classes, should be quite knowledgable in
C++ and Objective-C, and should have some idea of the difficulties and
limitations involved in language translation. The translator is implemented
in K+R C code which should be relatively portable, but may take a day
or two's work to get running on a new machine. Finally, the potential user
should realize that using the translator is not going to be a very useful
way to compare the relative merits of Objective-C and C++.

This tool is not flawless, but has proven to be useful to some people.

[lipingy...@gmail.com]

That's what I am looking for. Can you share it?

thanks,

[woodb...@gmail.com]

Sounds interesting. Have you considered developing this
as an on line service? Feel free to download/use the
archive here:

http://webEbenezer.net/build_integration.html

to help you develop such a service. I use that to
marshal files and user input between systems. I've
been working on it for a number of years so it's
increasingly mature.

Brian
Ebenezer Enterprises - John 3:16.
http://webEbenezer.net

[Juha Nieminen]

lipingy...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, July 28, 1988 11:19:01 AM UTC-7, Jim Adcock wrote:
>> I have an Objective-C to C++ "translation aid" that I'm willing to make
>> available on an "unsupported public domain" basis to strongly motivated
>> users.

Given that C++ has no support for introspection nor reflection, how
exactly can it achieve that?

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Wed, 2013-10-09, Juha Nieminen wrote:
> lipingy...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Thursday, July 28, 1988 11:19:01 AM UTC-7, Jim Adcock wrote:
>>> I have an Objective-C to C++ "translation aid" that I'm willing to make
>>> available on an "unsupported public domain" basis to strongly motivated
>>> users.
>
> Given that C++ has no support for introspection nor reflection, how
> exactly can it achieve that?

Jim Adcock wrote that back in -88. Thank you very much, Google!
Again.

(In 1988 I would have coded in BASIC for the Luxor ABC series
computers -- except in July I think I worked in a record store. My
classmate Johan toyed with Turbo C, but it seemed too weird for me.)

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

[willie...@gmail.com]

This is exactly what i'm looking for. Please share it.
Thanks.

[David Brown]

On 17/04/14 14:53, willie...@gmail.com wrote:
> This is exactly what i'm looking for. Please share it.
> Thanks.
>

Objective-C and C++ are different languages. Both are, to a fair
extent, extensions to C to provide extra features including object
support. But they do it in very different ways, using very different
philosophies. It is therefore almost certainly impossible to get even
half-decent automatic translation from one to the other.

Unless, of course, you mean you are looking for a human who will
translate Objective-C to C++ for you. That's certainly possible.

[Öö Tiib]

On Thursday, 17 April 2014 17:45:37 UTC+3, David Brown wrote:
> On 17/04/14 14:53, willie...@gmail.com wrote:
> > This is exactly what i'm looking for. Please share it.
> > Thanks.
>
> Objective-C and C++ are different languages. Both are, to a fair
> extent, extensions to C to provide extra features including object
> support. But they do it in very different ways, using very different
> philosophies. It is therefore almost certainly impossible to get even
> half-decent automatic translation from one to the other.

Also both Objective-C and C++ are quite different languages 2014
if to compare with 1988 (when OP posted his claim).

What are the exact difficulties? The Smalltalk-style messaging and
properties of Objective C can be usually simply mapped to C++
member functions and data members. On trickier cases one
can use lambdas, smart pointers and maybe some signalling lib.

> Unless, of course, you mean you are looking for a human who will
> translate Objective-C to C++ for you. That's certainly possible.

The most likely reason why someone uses Objective-C is that
Apple libraries have Objective-C interface. If lot of
application's work is done by such libraries then such translation
may result with even more Objective-C in wrapper layer.

[CHIN Dihedral]

Well, I-OS from Apple revenged
Steve Jobs's ended Next WS failure
from the Wintel platform by I-Phone and I-Pad and I-Pod in these years.