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> unless we have a new C++ front made in zig

Writing a C++ compiler is several order of magnitude more complicated than writing a C, Java, Go or Zig compiler. There's a very good reason there are only 3 in existence despite how ubiquitous C++ is (and even then, it takes years for them to keep up with the latest standards). C++'s grammar is type 0, there's isn't even an EBNF definition of it because it's pratically impossible to write a complete one. Clang only succeeded thanks to massive investments from the biggest players in the industry, and GCC/MSVC simply grew alongside the language. All other C++ compilers died a horrible death a long time ago.




Out of curiosity, does Intel's icc compiler see much use? It looks like it uses LLVM these days, but its frontend presumably still needs to handle all of C++'s complexity.


ICC is deprecated and will no longer see a release, but it uses the EDG front-end. Its replacement, ICX (the oneAPI compiler), uses clang as its front-end.

There are essentially only four extant C++ front-end implementations: GCC, Clang, MSVC, and EDG. All other C++ compilers are based on one of these four implementations, or have since gone extinct. (Except maybe Green Hills, but I can't recall anymore if their front-end is still in-house.)


Got it, thanks! I knew that Intel had a compiler for C and C++ from reading blogs about compiler research, but I didn't know any details about its current architecture.




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