Re: [Caml-list] Camlp4 with different backend

[Guillaume Yziquel <guillaume.yziquel@citycable.ch>]

Le Thursday 31 Mar 2011 à 12:14:07 (-0400), Jean-Baptiste Jeannin a écrit :
> Hello,
> 
> We are trying to use camlp4 to replace the front-end (lexer / parser
> up to building the Abstract Syntax Tree) of an experimental
> interpreter for a language close to OCaml. However we would like to
> keep our backend (the interpreter itself), as it behaves very
> differently from a normal interpreter, and this behavior cannot be
> translated into OCaml's code easily (or even at all).
> 
> However it seems that using camlp4, we can only use OCaml's own
> backend. In the camlp4 documentation, I could not find any way of
> getting the abstract syntax tree to feed it to another interpreter.
> Is this true or could camlp4 serve our purpose?
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Jean-Baptiste Jeannin
> CS department, Cornell University

Not sure I fully understand, but if you want to take your own source
code and generate an OCaml AST and then OCaml code, you can use
printers.

yziquel@seldon:~/git/ocaml/camlp4/Camlp4Printers$ ls
Camlp4AstDumper.ml    Camlp4NullDumper.ml      Camlp4OCamlPrinter.ml
Camlp4AutoPrinter.ml  Camlp4OCamlAstDumper.ml  Camlp4OCamlRevisedPrinter.ml

Off the top of my head:

Camlp4OCamlPrinter generates standard OCaml code.
Camlp4OCamlOCamlRevisedPrinter generates OCaml code in the revised
syntax.
Camlp4OCamlAstDumper dumps the Ast in a not-so-readable format.
Camlp4AutoPrinter behaves like Camlp4OCamlPrinter when the standard
output is a tty, and as Camlp4OCamlAstDumper otherwise. It's the default
if I'm not mistaken.

That may help to replace OCaml's backend with your own interpreter.

-- 
     Guillaume Yziquel