Experience with software conversion
Hanan Samet · Software Practice and Experience · 1981
Abstract Experience with a program to convert from LISP 1.6 to INTERLISP is described. The conversion program was designed with two goals in mind. First, it had to be capable of being executed in either of the languages's environments and it had to yield identical results. Second, the speed of the converted program was to be approximately the same as the original program. This meant that the conversion process must be completed prior to execution of the converted program. The various constraints and considerations imposed by these goals are examined. In addition, aside from problems in finding INTERLISP analogs for various LISP 1.6 constructs, careful consideration must also be paid to input/output functions, escape characters, global variables, representation of numbers and different string implementations.