[WHD]:
DOS C compilers used to offer in-line assembly language as a matter or course.  Why shouldn't a scripting language offer in-line C as a matter of course?

[AK]:
We already have inline-C with [CriTcl], but that calls an external compiler, [gcc] for now. The secondary question is more about calling the/a scripted compiler, directly loaded into the language interpreter.

[WHD]:
True.  It would be nice to have [CriTcl]'s functionality while dispensing with any kind of external compiler.  But other than providing an easy way to inline C in a Tcl script, what good would a scripted compiler be? E.g., how would you use scripts to change the compiler's behavior?

[AK]:
I was less thinking about changing its behaviour and more of making use of highlevel data structures available in scripting languages to make the implementation of algorithms for data-flow analysis and such more ... understandable and/or maintainable.

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[AK]:
Comments on parsing C and other languages. The text processing capabilities of scripting languages can make this part easier as well. ''[string] map'', [regsub], [split], etc. are powerful tools. Use the first, for example to the detect the various types of tokens and insert marker characters for separation. After this pre-tokenization phase we can listify the string into the token-list via split. Easy, fast, ... This takes care of the lexer. Parsing ... [Yeti], or similar

[Ro]:
I've never really put much time in learning all that arcana... especially since Tcl makes it dead easy to write config files as Tcl ;) Use the [source] Luke ;)

[AK]:
Well, the comment above are not about config-files, but the scripted compiler for C, etc. Also useful in Tools like Source Navigator which extract xref information out of sources.

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