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Subject: Re: Self compiling compiler
Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 16:41:17 -0700 (PDT)
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On Thursday, March 31, 2016 at 9:47:59 AM UTC-5, 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)?

cfront In a Picard voice: "make it work and compile right Riker."

If you want to REALLY take this to extreme: use the February 1985 printout
PDFs http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/c_plus_plus

The other versions are there too; but the dialect is old (the for loop
variables have different scoping, the new and delete operators are not
recognized and the libraries are not compatible if you try to use gcc
with this). There are scratch files in old versions there or elsewhere
in C and an empty scratch directory in version 3 and maybe 2 in the
archive.