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C2BF (2025)
| Paradigm(s) | imperative |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Ian Graham Martinez |
| Appeared in | 2025 |
| Computational class | Turing Complete |
| Reference implementation | c2bf |
| File extension(s) | N/A |
C2BF (not to be confused with Gregor Richard's C2BF) is a compiler from C into Brainfuck. The source code is available on Github, and a write-up explaining the implementation and its limitations is available here.
C2BF supports, among other features:
- if-statements, while-loops, for-loops
- arrays
- functions
- pointers
- function pointers
Implementation
C2BF compiles C code to a stack-based intermediate language, so that each instruction can then be translated into a Brainfuck snippet. For example,
putchar('0' + 5);
... is compiled into the sequence:
Push(48) Push(5) Add PutChar
Then, each of these is translated into Brainfuck (the convention is that each instruction begins execution pointing at the top of the stack, which grows rightward, and that all cells to the right of the tape head are zero):
Push(48) --> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Push(5) --> +++++ Add --> [-<+>]< PutChar --> .[-]<
For control flow, the IR is split into basic blocks, and the entire program is placed in a [] loop. See [1] for more details about the implementation and its limitations.