Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text?

From	compilers@is-not-my.name
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text?
Date	2012-04-19 11:31 +0000
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<12-04-034@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<12-04-028@comp.compilers>

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gah@nospam.ugcs.caltech.edu wrote

> Much of the book is about code generation, which, it seems to me,
> is not described in as much detail in many other compiler books.

I wonder how useful that will be for me given my non-UNIX target but I'll
try to look at that book since it got two thumbs up here.

> Parsing theory is where much of the theory, and hard to understand
> mathematical descriptions, appear, but in the end (back end, in the
> case of compilers) it is about code generations.

I looked over Let's Build a Compiler and the code generation part wasn't
difficult for me. I worked out the first few examples cross-compiling to
z/OS. But after that it started to look like it wasn't a serious article as
far as producing something useful goes. Anyone care to comment on it?

> As far as languages to write compilers in, it is now usual (though
> maybe not 50 years ago) to describe parts of the compiler in a
> special purpose language. As previously noted, there are flex and
> bison to write the front end, though you usually need to know some
> C to use them.

Not only don't I know C and am not interested in knowing it, but the tools
for the front end aren't available to me and I don't plan on using anything
I don't write. I've gotten this far without ever cutting and pasting and I
don't intend to start now.

> You should be able to write a description for a new target
> without knowing C, or much of parsing theory. You do need a
> good understanding of the instruction set for the target, though.

And that I have in spades. Thanks for your post.

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Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-17 21:28 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Philip Herron <redbrain@gcc.gnu.org> - 2012-04-18 14:25 +0100
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 16:32 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2012-04-20 03:58 +0000
        Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-22 10:10 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-20 09:45 +0100
        Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Jonathan Thornburg" <jthorn@astro.indiana.edu> - 2012-04-21 15:04 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-18 08:39 -0700
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 17:32 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Alain Ketterlin <alain@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> - 2012-04-18 18:24 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-04-19 13:53 +0200
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-21 03:07 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-21 12:01 +0100
        Re: code quality, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-04-22 12:41 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 11:31 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Jonathan Thornburg" <jthorn@astro.indiana.edu> - 2012-04-20 16:19 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Derek M. Jones" <derek@knosof.co.uk> - 2012-04-18 18:16 +0100
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-04-18 22:43 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-19 00:05 -0700
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 11:31 +0000
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 16:32 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-18 19:30 +0000
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-19 18:43 +0100
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-04-18 20:29 +0000
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-04-19 14:20 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 19:05 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-21 11:30 +0200
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Roberto Waltman <usenet@rwaltman.com> - 2012-04-18 22:00 -0400
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 11:31 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-04-20 07:02 +0000
        Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-22 11:10 +0000
          Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-04-22 23:56 +0000
        Re: PL/360, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? ArarghMail204@Arargh.com - 2012-04-24 19:13 -0500
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Bakul Shah <usenet@bitblocks.com> - 2012-04-18 21:15 -0700
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-20 16:06 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2012-04-19 14:58 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-20 16:06 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Joe Schmo" <askmeforit@myisp.com> - 2012-04-21 02:53 -0600
    Re: Writing parsers, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-22 16:18 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-23 19:12 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-21 11:22 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-21 18:58 -0700
      Re: writing interpreters, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-22 12:53 +0200
        Re: writing interpreters, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-22 12:29 -0700
      Re: generating bytecode, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-22 13:12 +0200
      Re: Recursive descent parsing and optimization, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-22 12:51 +0100
        Re: Recursive descent parsing and optimization, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-04-22 18:18 +0200
          Re: Recursive descent parsing and optimization, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Bartc" <bartc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-23 10:59 +0100
        Re: Recursive descent parsing and optimization, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-22 13:45 -0700
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-22 22:11 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-23 18:41 +0100
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? basile@starynkevitch.net - 2012-05-02 22:16 -0700
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@2ndquadrant.com> - 2012-06-06 16:52 +0000

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