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It seems we mostly agree. However, I'd like to challenge the belief that modifying the front-end of a compiler is too hard, or unreasonable. Even in the so-called "real world" where screwing up means you're fired. First, the point is to tweak the language, not the compiler. For instance, we may want to lighten the switch() syntax before GCC does, but we do not want to modify GCC itself if there's a simpler way. More often than not, there is as simpler way: just write a parser and a printer for your language, so you can do source-to-source compilation by chaining them. Printers are easy. Parsers are almost as easy, except for C++. Then tweak your parser (lighten some syntax, add some keywords…), do some pre-processing between the parser and the printer (yeah, true macros), whatever. Now there are some caveats: such a pre-processor may confuse IDEs, and may screw up error reporting (where errors don't track back to the actual source code). I personally don't care much about the former, but to solve the latter, the base compiler need to provide a way to be told where a given line of "source" code actually comes from (very useful for tools such as Lex/Yacc). Unfortunately, taking advantage of this will greatly complicate your pre-processor. |