CoffeeScript-like language for C/C++

Question

I've been looking for a language that provides the same functionality that Coffeescript has, but for C/C++. I mean a language that converts the code into C, but readable, just like CoffeeScript converts to Javascript, readable and all.

Answer 1

I think this is possible, and even desirable (I grudgingly deal with C++ when writing Node.js native modules), but more challenging than with a higher-level language like JavaScript.

What you're asking for is a language that would provide syntactic sugar without sacrificing performance or flexibility. Some syntactic sugars (say, syntactic whitespace or Ruby-style def/end blocks instead of curly braces) would be trivial to add. But adding anything more advanced, you'd run into two major hurdles: static typing, and garbage collection.

For instance, let's say that you wanted to add implicit returns. It seems like a small feature, but think about it: In order for the feature to be useful, you'd have to—at the very least—throw a compile-time error when the value of the last expression doesn't match the function's return type. That means that your compiler needs to inspect a line like

a->b

and figure out what type it is. That's possible in principle, but it's a heck of a lot more work than the CoffeeScript compiler does.

Or say you added list comprehensions. That means you're allocating an array whose length isn't known at compile-time, which means you'll need to later deallocate it yourself. So the syntactic sugar could actually hurt you. The rule "If you malloc it, you free it" doesn't work if the compiler is adding in the malloc for you, unless it can figure out where to put the free (which, again, is generally possible but would take a lot of work).

So, while I'd love to someone give C++ the CoffeeScript treatment, I don't expect it to happen any time soon—if ever. I think it's more likely that the world will eventually move on to something like D or Go for system-level programming.

Answer 2

I think OOC is probably the closest thing to Coffeescript for C. It's a programming language with a lot of the features you'd expect from dynamic languages (objects, first class functions, clean syntax) that compiles directly into C99.

http://ooc-lang.org/

Answer 3

One item missing from Jacindas list you might want to know about: Vala/Genie is a compiler targetting C with the GObject library implementing objects, written by Gnome. Vala is a C#-like syntax, and Genie a Python-like syntax, but for the rest they are the same system. It was actually created because bare C + GObject became too much of a pain to work with for the Gnome guys. Vala does objects and automatic memory management based on reference counting or ownership tracking, and a lot of other things you'd expect in a C# like language.

As for the CoffeeScript-like property, I just saw that there was an experimental feature to disable the dependency of the generated code on GObject, so it generates just plain C without any runtime dependencies. Doing so disables a number of more advanced OO features, but it still leaves you with a better syntax, a basic object system, and (semi-)automatic memory management.

I don't know how readable the output is, but if you run it through a pretty printer it might be very close to what you're looking for.