Bruce and Adam and I met at a Red Robin in Seattle to chat about D, and they both made a case for the D compiler being able to translate C files into .di "header" files.

The idea is to:

1. be able to work with D IDE programs that can only deal with D code

2. be able to handle the vast bulk of converting .h to D code, and then tweak by hand the bits that didn't translate well

Anyhow, I pontificated that this couldn't be done, because some C code is not representable as D code. Silly me.

But I got to thinking about it. It turns out that DMD can currently do this:

    dmd -c test.c -Hf=test.di

and voila! It creates a .di file from the C file. Who knew?

It could use some adjustment, but the bulk is there and it didn't crash or launch nuclear missiles. (Phew!)

Just like I discovered that ImportC could successfully import and use D code (including templates!), this is another fine discovery that DMD can convert C code to D code! An unexpected feature that (nearly) comes for free!

Wow!

Anyhow, have fun experimenting with this!

On Saturday, 21 October 2023 at 02:13:24 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Bruce and Adam and I met at a Red Robin in Seattle to chat about D, and they both made a case for the D compiler being able to translate C files into .di "header" files.
>
> [...]

Interesting indeed. Nice work.

Can you expand on how dmd can convert C to D? I didn't quite get that part.

On 10/21/2023 1:12 AM, Imperatorn wrote:
> Can you expand on how dmd can convert C to D? I didn't quite get that part.

DMD already has the capability to read in a .d file, then from the AST generate a .di file. Since ImportC gets turned into an AST, too, it can turn that AST into a .di file, too.

On Saturday, 21 October 2023 at 17:04:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/21/2023 1:12 AM, Imperatorn wrote:
>> Can you expand on how dmd can convert C to D? I didn't quite get that part.
>
> DMD already has the capability to read in a .d file, then from the AST generate a .di file. Since ImportC gets turned into an AST, too, it can turn that AST into a .di file, too.

I see, nice. I will experiment with that a bit.

On Saturday, 21 October 2023 at 17:04:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/21/2023 1:12 AM, Imperatorn wrote:
>> Can you expand on how dmd can convert C to D? I didn't quite get that part.
>
> DMD already has the capability to read in a .d file, then from the AST generate a .di file. Since ImportC gets turned into an AST, too, it can turn that AST into a .di file, too.

Nice, I just tried it and as long as you have your path setup right, it works well :)

For others reading this, since I'm on Windows, I just opened the developer command prompt and just ran:

dmd -c hashmap.c -Hf="hashmap.di"

And it just worked. Pretty impressive.

On 10/21/2023 11:33 AM, Imperatorn wrote:
> And it just worked. Pretty impressive.

Ain't it cool? I love it when things like this happen.

On Saturday, 21 October 2023 at 02:13:24 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Bruce and Adam and I met at a Red Robin in Seattle to chat about D, and they both made a case for the D compiler being able to translate C files into .di "header" files.
>
> The idea is to:
>

I could have sworn I told Bruce that he could do this two years ago shortly after importc came out!

On Sunday, 22 October 2023 at 08:28:42 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> On Saturday, 21 October 2023 at 02:13:24 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Bruce and Adam and I met at a Red Robin in Seattle to chat about D, and they both made a case for the D compiler being able to translate C files into .di "header" files.
>>
>> The idea is to:
>>
>
> I could have sworn I told Bruce that he could do this two years ago shortly after importc came out!

You probably did! :-)  I knew that others had it brewing for a bit but had not remembered it as being *that* old!  Kudos.

Anyway, glad to see this is being explored/exposed.  It's great to draft along behind the, well maintained, importC capability.

On Saturday, 21 October 2023 at 02:13:24 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Bruce and Adam and I met at a Red Robin in Seattle to chat about D, and they both made a case for the D compiler being able to translate C files into .di "header" files.
>
> [...]

Sorry but I don’t think I’ve ever used .di files. What is the significance of this?

On 10/22/2023 4:45 PM, jmh530 wrote:
> Sorry but I don’t think I’ve ever used .di files. What is the significance of this?

.di files serve the same purpose as .h files do in C.