Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: Roger L Costello Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Are there "compiler generators"? Date: Sat, 28 May 2022 22:27:53 +0000 Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 30 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <22-05-054@comp.compilers> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="91449"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: question, comment Posted-Date: 28 May 2022 22:16:18 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Content-Language: en-US Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:3026 Hi Folks, There are lexer generators. Flex is a lexer generator. There are parser generators. Bison is a parser generator. Are there compiler generators? Page 52 of the book "Crafting a Compiler with C" says this in the chapter titled "Scanning--Theory and Practice": Programming a scanner generator is an example of nonprocedural programming. That is, unlike ordinary programming, which we call procedural, we do not tell a scanner generator "how" do scan but simply "what" we want scanned. This is a higher-level approach and in many ways a more natural one. Much recent research in computer science is directed toward nonprocedural programming styles. (Database query languages and Prolog, a "logic" programming language, are nonprocedural.) Nonprocedural programming is most successful in limited domains, such as scanning, where the range of implementation decisions that must be automatically made is limited. Nonetheless, a long-standing (and as yet unrealized) goal of computer scientists is to generate an entire compiler from a specification of the properties of the source language and target computer. That was written in 1991. Is it still true in 2022--there are no compiler generators? /Roger [There are certainly programs that will generate a combined lexer and parser but there's a lot more to a compiler. -John]