@c Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. @c This is part of the GCC manual. @c For copying conditions, see the file gcc.texi. @node Languages @chapter Language Front Ends in GCC The interface to front ends for languages in GCC, and in particular the @code{tree} structure (@pxref{Trees}), was initially designed for C, and many aspects of it are still somewhat biased towards C and C-like languages. It is, however, reasonably well suited to other procedural languages, and front ends for many such languages have been written for GCC@. Writing a compiler as a front end for GCC, rather than compiling directly to assembler or generating C code which is then compiled by GCC, has several advantages: @itemize @bullet @item GCC front ends benefit from the support for many different target machines already present in GCC@. @item GCC front ends benefit from all the optimizations in GCC@. Some of these, such as alias analysis, may work better when GCC is compiling directly from source code then when it is compiling from generated C code. @item Better debugging information is generated when compiling directly from source code than when going via intermediate generated C code. @end itemize Because of the advantages of writing a compiler as a GCC front end, GCC front ends have also been created for languages very different from those for which GCC was designed, such as the declarative logic/functional language Mercury. For these reasons, it may also be useful to implement compilers created for specialized purposes (for example, as part of a research project) as GCC front ends.