CTFE - compiling other languages inside D

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 8/10/11 11:09 AM, Marco Leise wrote:
> With the recent ORM and RegEx projects dissecting SQL statements and
> regular expressions turning them into D code, I am impressed by the
> possibilities of CTFE. Where are the limitations to this system? An
> unlikely example would be a C compiler within CTFE that takes a string
> of C source code and turns it into a D mixin. Is that possible?

Yah, that would be possible (albeit difficult). I think, however, that 
better applications of CTFE are not for translating full-blown languages 
into D. Instead, the best added value would be to translate small DSLs 
into D code. Examples include:

* regex (I'm very glad Dmitry found the time to implement that - static 
regexen will long serve as a poster child of CTFE's power);

* SQL - embedded SQL integrated perfectly with D data would be awesome 
and relatively easy to define;

* Tokenizers (think lex);

* Parsers (think yacc, antlr etc);

* String interpolation (think Python's format, printf-style format 
parsed statically etc);

* Make :o);

* Protocol description;

* Automata, transducers of various kinds;

* and more.

I hope Dmitry's work will mark a growing trend of defining DSLs in D.


Andrei