The Mercury compiler has a backend which compiles to C. This is currently described as "high-level" C, because the generated code sort-of (relatively speaking)

The Mercury compiler has a backend which compiles to C. This is currently described as "high-level" C, because the generated code sort-of (relatively speaking) looks like code that a C programmer might write. But back in the early days (mid 90s?) it emitted "low-level" GNU (not ANSI/ISO) C, which basically looked like assembly code for an abstract machine. Kind of like the "compilation strategy" described in TFA, taken a number of steps further. One of the nice things about GNU C is that various GCC-specific extensions can be taken advantage of. For example ISO C does not require a compiler to optimise tail recursive calls, which are heavily used in functional (and logic) programming languages, where recursion is used instead of loops. It also lets you access CPU registers directly, and write inline assembly code.