I always asked myself if it would be possible to make a Java to C++ converter.
Maybe a tool that converts the Java syntax to the C++ syntax?
I am aware that the languages differ, but simple things like loops where the semantics match 1 to 1.
Is there such a tool? Or is it possible to make one?
It's possible to do anything given enough time, money and resources. Is it practical? Beyond trivial examples not really. Or rather it depends on what constitutes an acceptable error rate.
The real problem is that the idioms are different in Java to C++. Java to C# for example would actually be far easier (because the idioms are much more similar). The biggest of course is that C++ has destructors and manually managed memory. Java uses finally blocks for this kind of behaviour and has garbage collection.
Also Java has a common Object supertype. C++ doesn't.
The generics to templates would be nigh on impossible I would imagine.
Is is possible, no question, but it won't be so simple. It would be a Java compiler which generates C++.
If you want to do that from scratch, it will be very hard, you have to do all the work javac and the JVM do for you (e.g. garbage collection).
Btw. Google has a Java to JavaScript compiler (included in GWT)
As said it would be tough to convert Java to C++ but we can have an applicaiton or tool that generates code in Java and equivalnet C++ code.
I know one applicaiton which generates code in C++/Java/C# given a model which has its own way to deifine it.
That tool belongs to CA and name is CA Plex. Search on www.ca.com
http://www.tangiblesoftwaresolutions.com/Order/Order_Upgrade_Instant_CPlus_Java_Edition.htm
Depends on the domain of where the code will be used, from a learning perspective perhaps it might be interesting.
i just found this via a google as I remembered seeing one in Univeristy that created code based on uml.
There are programs out there that claim they can do this, but none have gained enough popularity to be frequently mentioned, so we'll leave them at "attempts". Making a converter would require a lot of AI built into your program. The difficulty is increased tenfold when swing is involved because GTK/wxWidgets/Qt/win32 API all differ greatly from swing. But it is possible. Not that the code quality will be great, and no guarantees your program won't crash due to separate memory handling methods, but it's possible.
Something neat would be a tool , that translate java to "C++ using Java API" (like GNU GCJ CNI), one problem remain is to manage array.length (array not vector) ...
