Re: Crazy idea: compiling C to Lua

[David Given <dg@...>]

Nikolay Zapolnov wrote:
[...]
> Maybe this is not exactly what you want, but there is a CLUE:
> http://cluecc.sourceforge.net/
> 
> It can compile C to Lua, Python, Perl, Java and Javascript.
> 
> The project seems abandoned, but it can help to understand how the
> translation could be made.

Not quite. I was finally prodded into getting it working again just the
other day, and I updated the Lua backend so that it uses the new Lua 5.2
goto statement. (It's not checked in yet.) Here are the new results of
running the whetstone benchmark:

gcc directly:       2582
clue -> LuaJIT:     2482
clue -> C -> gcc:   2361
clue -> Java:        784
clue -> Javascript:  105
clue -> Perl:          2.7

The top one is what you get if you compile the benchmark directly with
gcc. I'm afraid I don't have a Lua interpreter value because I don't
have a luasocket for Debian Lua 5.2 yet. The Javascript interpreter is V8.

That's all very preliminary and may in fact be wrong --- it's all work
in progress. Assuming the results are correct, the LuaJIT score is
remarkable. Adding some more LuaJIT-specific optimisations --- using FFI
types, for example --- ought to speed it up some more.

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