Posted by iandinwoodie 3 hours ago
EDIT: But in this case it seems something significant is being released, it would be better with less writing and more human if possible.
The "frontend" is the part of the compiler that understands the input language: lexer, parser, template instantiation, constexpr evaluation, ... The EDG frontend produces an intermediate representation (IL) that is then used by the different compiler vendors to generate machine code. Or do code analysis.
EDG can also be used as a C++-to-C compiler.
Nice to see this still exists!
After all, this is how it all started back in the days of - what was it called again ? - yeah, cfront
TLDR EDG C++ is a compiler frontend developed by EDG since the 80s which has been used under the hood for a whole bunch of commercial C and C++ compilers, static analyzers, linters, and IDE code completion tools.
Odds are if you are familiar with a closed source tool in one of those categories above, there's a decent chance it uses EDG's frontend somewhere in it under the hood.
It looks weird, but it actually makes sense! The flow is more natural - first the function definition, and then the explanation of what it does. It also avoids repeating the function name.
So it came up in an era where folks were inventing their own style and the huge homogenizing influence of the gnu standards (and other open source projects) hadn't taken hold.
I like it. It feels like another language, and has its advantages. I really like to know of alternate ways of doing things, even if I don't adopt them myself.
void func(var1, var2) int var1, char* var2. { ... }
perhaps some legacy from that? Probably not, but just first thing that popped into my head since it feels similar :shrug: