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From: compilers@is-not-my.name
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text?
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:31:33 -0000
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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.