Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!feeder.usenetexpress.com!feeder-in1.iad1.usenetexpress.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: "Robin Vowels" Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2019 19:58:42 +1100 Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 22 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <19-02-005@comp.compilers> References: <19-02-002@comp.compilers> Mime-Version: 1.0 Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="51063"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: design, PL/I, comment Posted-Date: 10 Feb 2019 14:58:28 EST 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:2157 From: "Costello, Roger L." Sent: Friday, February 08, 2019 11:20 PM > The book was written in the 90's. Are there new languages that are even better > than ML as a compiler implementation language? PL/I is a very good language; being general purpose, it has everything you'd need. Another langage is XPL, which was specially designed for writing compilers. It has special features for string-handling that make it fast for parsing text. (There's a text, "A compiler Generator" by McKeeman et al, with the tools to implement a language translator). [I wouldn't use PL/I for writing a compiler. Its pointer handling and strings are by modern standards pretty klunky. XPL is pretty cool for a language designed over 50 years ago (really) but its main improvement over PL/I, other than taking out most of the complication not useful for system programming, was variable length strings in a garbage collected heap. These days everything from java to python to C++ does that for you. -John]