From: skibud2
Subject: GCC & Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <c20f7bd3-0ef7-4505-9c40-846f4c402a6e@n77g2000hse.googlegroups.com>
I apologize in advance for all of you that already know this, but I
thought many of you would find the following interesting. I was
looking through the source files for GCC and the back-end description
language is basically lisp. Check out the machine description files
(.md). Kind of cool.

Does anyone have any more information about the history of this?

Mike
From: Alessio
Subject: Re: GCC & Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <dc904f72-3517-4c8d-b1d0-84df84abb0a1@j28g2000hsj.googlegroups.com>
I don't really know, but probably the fact that Richard Stallman is/
has been one of the main developers might have something to do with
it...
From: Paul Tarvydas
Subject: Re: GCC & Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <fpkrld$bnq$1@aioe.org>
skibud2 wrote:

> I apologize in advance for all of you that already know this, but I
> thought many of you would find the following interesting. I was
> looking through the source files for GCC and the back-end description
> language is basically lisp. Check out the machine description files
> (.md). Kind of cool.
> 
> Does anyone have any more information about the history of this?
> 
> Mike

The RTL technology (register-transfer language) comes from brilliant
compiler research done by Fraser and Davidson (a number of papers published
in ACM Toplas) 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_Transfer_Language

The lisp-y macros are due to Stallman.

pt
From: Jon Harrop
Subject: Re: GCC & Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <13rstfc7spt78aa@corp.supernews.com>
skibud2 wrote:
> I apologize in advance for all of you that already know this, but I
> thought many of you would find the following interesting. I was
> looking through the source files for GCC and the back-end description
> language is basically lisp. Check out the machine description files
> (.md). Kind of cool.
> 
> Does anyone have any more information about the history of this?

Lots of compilers generate Lisp-like languages. OCaml is another. Run the
top-level with:

$ ocaml -dlambda
        Objective Caml version 3.10.0

#

and it prints out lambda trees as s-exprs for each OCaml definition:

# let rec d e x = match e with
    | `Int _ -> `Int 0
    | `Add(f, g) -> `Add(d f x, d g x)
    | `Mul(f, g) -> `Add(`Mul(f, d g x), `Mul(g, d f x))
    | `Var v ->   `Int (if v=x then 1 else 0);;

(letrec
  (d/68
     (function e/69 x/70
       (let (variant/79 (field 0 e/69))
         (if (>= variant/79 3855332)
           (if (>= variant/79 4298439)
             (makeblock 0 3654863 (if (caml_equal (field 1 e/69) x/70) 1 0))
             (let
               (match/78 (field 1 e/69)
                g/74 (field 1 match/78)
                f/73 (field 0 match/78))
               (makeblock 0 3254785
                 (makeblock 0
                   (makeblock 0 3855332
                     (makeblock 0 f/73 (apply d/68 g/74 x/70)))
                   (makeblock 0 3855332
                     (makeblock 0 g/74 (apply d/68 f/73 x/70)))))))
           (if (>= variant/79 3654863) [0: 3654863 0]
             (let (match/77 (field 1 e/69))
               (makeblock 0 3254785
                 (makeblock 0 (apply d/68 (field 0 match/77) x/70)
                   (apply d/68 (field 1 match/77) x/70)))))))))
  (apply (field 1 (global Toploop!)) "d" d/68))

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?u
comp.lang.lisp / 2008 / feb