What alternative syntax exist for C/C++? (think SPECS or Mirah)

I wondered if there are any simpler or more powerful syntax for C or C++. I have already come across SPECS. That is an alternative syntax for C++. But are there any others and what about C?

It could also be a sort of code generator so that things like functors could be defined less verbosely. I imagine it could be made as a code generator that compiles to C or C++ code which is very similar to the code you wrote in the alternative syntax.

Mirah is an example of doing this for Java.

Ideally I would want to write C in Go like syntax. I like how they开发者_JS百科 fixed switch-case, and in general made everything much less verbose.

#define BEGIN {
#define END }

No! Just say NO!

The only general-purpose tool that I'm aware of is Lazy C++, which lets you create a single .lzz source file from which it can generate the .h and .cpp files.

There are also numerous approaches to doing code generation for C++. (For examples, see Cog, Pump, or Wikipedia's list.) These aren't full-fledged alternate syntaxes, but they can help with particular categories of syntax (such as automatically generating templates taking 1 to N arguments, to work around the lack of variadic templates).

Instead of a change in syntax, consider a change in abstraction: Increase your abstraction with a custom-defined DSL. Tool support would be necessary to reach optimal productivity.

If your goal is simplification, a lightweight modeling approach, either text-based (like XText), graph-based (like MetaEdit+) or tree-based (like AtomWeaver) would remove some complexity on the project by simplifying the solution.

If it is only a syntax you're after, why can't you define your own, as a trivial preprocessor->parser->C-pretty-printer chain? It will be no more than a semantically reach preprocessor, something of a CamlP4 style, but for C. No one but you knows what kind of syntax you'd find suitable, so its implementation is entirely up to you.

It doesn't look to me like SPECS is really C++ anymore, I certainly would have a hard time reading such code (at least initially).

You should pick a language based on your needs, not pick a specific language and then modify it to fit what you want to do.

If you want to program Go, then program in Go, don't try to write C in a Go-like syntax as that'll just make it hard for anyone who actually knows C to read your code.