What about O'Caml, Haskell, C99, Ada 2005, Scheme or Lisp?
I do not think that there is any particular high level language that is suited to be another compiler's target language.
wilx
2010-08-06 05:25:17
+1
A:
+1
A:
Google's Go would be a good language to target, I think. Go seeks to do to modern languages what C# sought to do to C++ and Java a decade ago -- improve upon it, make it "better" (in the beholder's eye).
You should also be sure that Lua is supported, which AFAIK isn't hard to do since it piggybacks upon C/C++ I think (??).
stimpy77
2010-08-06 05:31:49
Go is definitely a good choice, since it's basically a high-level systems language, but I am worried about the value of targeting it because it's still in its infancy and doesn't yet seem to have a firm hold.
Jon Purdy
2010-08-06 05:36:42
+5
A:
JavaScript, I'd add. Syntax like C, has lambdas, very popular, has very fast HQ implementations which compile to native code and is available everywhere. Double-plus: you can demo your compiler in any web browser and everybody is listening today, if you have something that cranks out JavaScript.
Luther Blissett
2010-08-06 07:32:51
Ooh. The ability to generate hype with an in-browser demo is reason enough to use it. I can't believe I didn't think of it.
Jon Purdy
2010-08-06 14:54:00
The browser compatibility is definitely nice, as is the ability to attract a large population of developers that cannot really interact with C code easily.
Matthieu M.
2010-08-06 15:17:05
I'm accepting this on account of upvotes, even though @6502's answer is more like what I originally wanted.
Jon Purdy
2010-08-06 15:30:45
+3
A:
If your backend would be just plain C you wouldn't have support for several constructs of your base language, but you would gain compatibility to other languages (nearly all languages can be easyly linked to C libraries). You could write some parts of your program in your language and some parts in other languages. And its fast to compile.
Many parser generators are generating C code, so its also not uncommon.
nob
2010-08-06 09:09:08
C is a quite reasonable suggestion, but I'm already targeting C++, which amounts to the same thing in terms of binary compatibility with other languages while also providing loads of handy features such as temporaries, exceptions, and templates.
Jon Purdy
2010-08-06 14:51:11