Cl-cpp-generator – A Common Lisp library to generate C/C++ code

> There is no such language as C/C++.

I was language-lawyering in the comp.lang.c newsgroup in the 1990's and early 2000's.

That bit come up from time to time: "hey you stupid, there is no such language as c/c++!" I participated in that myself, sadly.

Most of the time, it wasn't what the person meant (that there is such a language). Just that they are looking for a solution in either C or C++ or whatever.

(In fact, there is a language that could be plausibly be called "C/C++": useful programs can be written that compile as either C or C++. The easiest way to code that way is to stick to the C90 dialect, and avoid the few C++ incompatibilities that it has. I have considerable experience in this area, that is ongoing.)

In this case, the generator can perhaps be used for C, if C++ features are avoided, so it means C or C++. Just like "if/when" or "he/she".

HN guideline: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

One possibility that I can see is generating code that will run on microcontrollers. While there are some LLVM+microcontroller experiments, I'd say this is probably not an easy way to go. And trying to run some kind of Lisp on a microcontroller will also only get you so far.

Sometimes what you want to generate is code that other people can build upon. For example, given a specification of some message protocol, you could generate classes that represent those messages and can do the parsing/serializing by themselves.

You could generate LLVM code that does that, but the point is integrating the generated code in a bigger project