From where come from the term "lowering"?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 12:42:26AM +0000, Asman01 wrote:
> I was reading Walter's article where he use this term and explain
> what is it. He did a clear explanation abount what what it does. But
> where come from actually this term? I can't find anything related
> with a lot of keyword combinations on google/bing. And isn't only me
> want to know about origin of this term (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20252876/wanted-good-definition-of-the-term-lowering-in-the-context-of-compilers)

I don't know about the exact etymology of this term, but my
understanding of it is that it's referring to the translation of a
higher-level concept to a lower-level implementation, such as the
translation of a C construct into assembly language, or the translation
of a C++ construct into C (which the first C++ compilers did). In the
context of D, it can also be used to describe a particular syntax that
translates to "simpler" or lower-level primitives, such as:

	foreach (i; 0 .. 10) { ... }

translating into:

	for (i=0; i < 10; i++) { ... }

Hence the term "lowering" (take a high-level abstraction and translate
it into a lower-level implementation).


T

-- 
Only boring people get bored. -- JM