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From: compilers@is-not-my.name
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Subject: Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text?
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:06:21 -0000
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Bakul Shah <usenet@nospam.bitblocks.com> wrote:

> Check out Nils M Holm's "Practical Compiler Construction", available
> at lulu.com. It is a 365 page "tour" through a *complete* compiler for
> a subset of C language.  The compiler can compile itself and you can
> download the code from author's site (www.t3x.org).  It doesn't use
> lex or yacc (just a hand-rolled scanner and a recursive descent
> parser).  The compiler is about 4300 lines of code.  It describes all
> the key concepts but given the simple design doesn't go into a lot of
> details (beyond describing the code). The book describes a i386 code
> generator.  The code generator interface seems well enough abstracted.
> When challenged, Nils put together a x86-64 backend in a day!

Thanks for the description on this. I have downloaded a bunch of free books
over the years and I do have this one. Part of my problem is sorting through
them and understanding if they're something I could use. Your comments are
very helpful especially since you mentioned he explains all the code and
doesn't use external tools.