CTFE - compiling other languages inside D

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2011-08-10 20:04, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> 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

I think it would be better if D was more DSL friendlier instead of 
embedding code inside string mixins.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg