Paired with C FFI available in most languages, this seems like the nicer solution. It's simpler than generating code for a bunch of high level languages, and more performant
> Kaitai Struct is in a similar space, generating safe parsers for multiple target programming languages from one declarative specification. Again, Wuffs differs in that it is a complete (and performant) end to end implementation, not just for the structured parts of a file format. Repeating a point in the previous paragraph, the difficulty in decoding the GIF format isn't in the regularly-expressible part of the format, it's in the LZW compression. Kaitai's GIF parser returns the compressed LZW data as an opaque blob.
This is not an official Google product, it is just code that happens to be owned by Google> However, unlike hand-written C, Wuffs the Language is safe with respect to buffer overflows, integer arithmetic overflows and null pointer dereferences. A key difference between Wuffs and other memory-safe languages is that all such checks are done at compile time, not at run time. If it compiles, it is safe, with respect to those three bug classes.
Sounds a lot like ZZ. [0] It also sounds much like SPARK Ada, except for transpiling to C.
The linked-to page says: "Version 0.2. The API and ABI aren't stabilized yet. The compiler undoubtedly has bugs."
There are not many recent commits, and mostly by one developer.
wuffs is much more powerful: it's essentially a safe C dialect that compiles to C, that lets you write an entire codec and know that there aren't any overflows.