Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!news-out.readnews.com!news-xxxfer.readnews.com!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: compilers@is-not-my.name Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2012 11:10:27 -0000 Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 53 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <12-04-064@comp.compilers> References: <12-04-046@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com X-Trace: leila.iecc.com 1335104893 16388 64.57.183.58 (22 Apr 2012 14:28:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:28:13 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: code, history, comment Posted-Date: 22 Apr 2012 10:28:13 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:607 glen herrmannsfeldt wrote: > One Wirth language that you might find interesting is PL/360. > > PL/360 looks like a high-level language but works like assembly > language. As an example (which I am remembering from 40 years ago) I have the doc and compiler code, everything was released into the public domain. It's so close to assembler I didn't consider it might be a good way to learn to write a compiler but maybe it is. A 10 second look shows it's pretty heavily abstracted. I will have to spend more time on it but it may be more a tribute to the traditional Wirth terseness than something to learn from, at least without the professor around to ask questions of. > But I don't understand your refusal to use the tools that are > available. As I said they're not available on my target platform. > FLEX and BISON are freely available, you can't complain that they cost too > much. True but irrelevant! > You can run them on a freely available OS (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc.) > on machines that you can find for very low prices, or often enough given > away. Ok but those aren't my targets. I'm not interested in using those for this project, as I said. And I would really like to understand what I am doing and the way I have always done that is to write my own code. Why is that upsetting (hard to understand, etc.) to you? I haven't mentioned the cost of anything, I'm not sure where you are coming from here. > The nice thing about the tools is that you can get something running > fairly fast, and without needing to get too deep into the math. You > can go as deep or shallow into the innards of FLEX and BISON as you > want. One project that should be about right for one person, and > without a lot of math, is rewriting FLEX and BISON to generate code in > another language, such as PL/I. It would be nice to "get something running fairly fast" but if I do that depending on other pieces I don't understand it doesn't really help me. I want to learn as much as I can doing this. > [PL/360 was a great little language, but the source code to the > compiler was apparently lost. -John] I believe Jay Maynard is hosting several PL/360 packages. AFAIK they are complete. [If so, they'd be a good place to start. It's basically an assembler with Algol syntax, so it has a real parser. -John]