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From: Thomas David Rivers <rivers@dignus.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Self compiling compiler
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 14:16:49 -0400
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ERSHC wrote:

>I'd like to teach an undergraduate class based on the Thompson hack
>(see Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture). I don't want to write a
>"whole" compiler, so need a compiler that can compile itself,
>preferably one that runs under Linux and is reasonably small. Can
>anyone point me to something more appropriate than gcc (which is far
>from small)?

Nicklaus Wirth's "Compiler Construction" text (his 3rd in this genre)
describes the small language Oberon-0 and walks thru writing a compiler
for this.

The compiler targets a RISC architecture for which he provides an emulator.

And - Dr. Wirth made the book available for free - you can get it from:

   http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf

and - you can read an HTML version (as well as get a copy of the sources)
from:

    https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/CompilerConstruction/index.html

as with all of Dr. Wirth's code - it is very small and very elegant while
simulaneously touching on all the major topics.  The text and the code
are very approachable to an undergraduate student.

   - Dave Rivers -

--
rivers@dignus.com  Work: (919) 676-0847