DUduneroadrunner·Sep 3, 2017
One case the author left out was translation to "idiomatic" higher level language, which involves identifying abstractions that are intrinsically present, but where never explicitly expressed, in the original code. For example I've been working on a translator/converter from C to a memory-safe subset of C++[1]. The output is intended to be readable and maintainable as source code in its own right.
So when for example, encountering a pointer in the original C source, you have to determine from context whether the author is using it as an iterator to a fixed-sized array, an iterator to a dynamically-sized array, an "owning" reference to a dynamically allocated object, or just a weak/observer reference to an object, and translate to the appropriate "higher-level" element.
So in a sense it's a "decompiler" to a (higher-level) language the cod
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e was never compiled from. As a source-to-source transformer, presumably it would qualify as a "transpiler". But does that term have an connotation that the output is just an intermediate translation not intended to be maintained or used directly?
[1] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus-AutoTransla...