How to convert C++ Code to C [closed]

I have some C++ code. In the code there are many classes defined, their member functions, constructors, destructors for those classes, few template classes and lots of C++ stuff. Now I need to convert the source to plain C code.

I the have following questions:

1. Is there any tool to convert C++ code and header files to C code?

2. Will I have to do total rewrite of the code (I will have to remove the constructors,destructors and move that code into some init(), deinit() functions; change classes to structures, make existing member functions as function pointers in those newly defined structures and then invoke those functions using function pointers etc..)?

3. If I have to convert it manually myself, what C++ specific code-data constructs/semantics do I need to pay attention to while doing the conversion from C++ to C?

Solution 1:

There is indeed such a tool, Comeau's C++ compiler. . It will generate C code which you can't manually maintain, but that's no problem. You'll maintain the C++ code, and just convert to C on the fly.

Solution 2:

http://llvm.org/docs/FAQ.html#translatecxx

It handles some code, but will fail for more complex implementations as it hasn't been fully updated for some of the modern C++ conventions. So try compiling your code frequently until you get a feel for what's allowed.

Usage sytax from the command line is as follows for version 9.0.1:

clang -c CPPtoC.cpp -o CPPtoC.bc -emit-llvm
clang -march=c  CPPtoC.bc -o CPPtoC.c

For older versions (unsure of transition version), use the following syntax:

llvm-g++ -c CPPtoC.cpp -o CPPtoC.bc -emit-llvm
llc -march=c  CPPtoC.bc -o CPPtoC.c

Note that it creates a GNU flavor of C and not true ANSI C. You will want to test that this is useful for you before you invest too heavily in your code. For example, some embedded systems only accept ANSI C.

Also note that it generates functional but fairly unreadable code. I recommend commenting and maintain your C++ code and not worrying about the final C code.

EDIT : although official support of this functionality was removed, but users can still use this unofficial support from Julia language devs, to achieve mentioned above functionality.

Solution 3:

While you can do OO in C (e.g. by adding a theType *this first parameter to methods, and manually handling something like vtables for polymorphism) this is never particularly satisfactory as a design, and will look ugly (even with some pre-processor hacks).

I would suggest at least looking at a re-design to compare how this would work out.

Overall a lot depends on the answer to the key question: if you have working C++ code, why do you want C instead?

Solution 4:

Maybe good ol' cfront will do?

Solution 5:

A compiler consists of two major blocks: the 'front end' and the 'back end'. The front end of a compiler analyzes the source code and builds some form of a 'intermediary representation' of said source code which is much easier to analyze by a machine algorithm than is the source code (i.e. whereas the source code e.g. C++ is designed to help the human programmer to write code, the intermediary form is designed to help simplify the algorithm that analyzes said intermediary form easier). The back end of a compiler takes the intermediary form and then converts it to a 'target language'.

Now, the target language for general-use compilers are assembler languages for various processors, but there's nothing to prohibit a compiler back end to produce code in some other language, for as long as said target language is (at least) as flexible as a general CPU assembler.

Now, as you can probably imagine, C is definitely as flexible as a CPU's assembler, such that a C++ to C compiler is really no problem to implement from a technical pov.

So you have: C++ ---frontEnd---> someIntermediaryForm ---backEnd---> C

You may want to check these guys out: http://www.edg.com/index.php?location=c_frontend (the above link is just informative for what can be done, they license their front ends for tens of thousands of dollars)

PS As far as i know, there is no such a C++ to C compiler by GNU, and this totally beats me (if i'm right about this). Because the C language is fairly small and it's internal mechanisms are fairly rudimentary, a C compiler requires something like one man-year work (i can tell you this first hand cause i wrote such a compiler myself may years ago, and it produces a [virtual] stack machine intermediary code), and being able to have a maintained, up-to-date C++ compiler while only having to write a C compiler once would be a great thing to have...