Re: Best language for implementing compilers?

From	mertesthomas@gmail.com
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: Best language for implementing compilers?
Date	2019-03-12 10:40 -0700
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<19-03-017@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<19-02-002@comp.compilers>

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Am Freitag, 8. Februar 2019 16:55:48 UTC+1 schrieb Costello, Roger L.:
> Best language for implementing compilers?

There are language features, which make programming easier.
This is independent of the type of program.

Compilers are big programs. Compilation speed and/or run-time
performance of the generated program can be a goal. But also the
effort (time) to write a compiler must be taken into account.  The
cost to maintain a compiler is also an important factor.  Therefore
the decision for a compiler language is not so easy.

I have written scanners and parsers in C, C++, Java and Seed7.  I have
used C for the scanner and parser of the Seed7 interpreter.  I have
also written scanner, parser and preprocessor for C in Seed7.  The
code generator of the Seed7 compiler is written in Seed7.  My Basic
interpreter, which tokenizes Basic lines, is written is Seed7.

So I have some experience in writing compiler parts in higher (Seed7)
and lower (C) level languages.

Higher level features like memory management help a lot. E.g.: The
Seed7 compiler generates C code. All this C code snippets are held in
strings. The are concatenated and assigned several times, before they
are written out. Doing this in C with manual memory management would
have been a hard task.

So if you want to create a compiler in a reasonable time I suggest you
prefer a higher level language.

If compilation speed is the criteria number one you will probably need
to use C (to squeze every cycle out of the machine). This is what I
did, when implementing the front end of the Seed7 interpreter.

I designed some language features of Seed7, to support scanning and
parsing. E.g.: Every file in Seed7 has a bufferChar. A bufferChar is
just a single character attached to the file.  If you use LL(1)
parsing for tokens you read a character and assign it to the
bufferChar. Then, depending on the bufferChar, you decide what to do
next. If the bufferChar is a digit you will read a number. If the
bufferChar is a letter you will read an identifier. Etc. Examples of
such scanner functions can be found in the library scanfile.s7i.

Regards,
Thomas Mertes

--
Seed7 Homepage:  http://seed7.sourceforge.net
Seed7 - The extensible programming language: User defined statements
and operators, abstract data types, templates without special
syntax, OO with interfaces and multiple dispatch, statically typed,
interpreted or compiled, portable, runs under linux/unix/windows.

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Best language for implementing compilers? "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org> - 2019-02-08 12:20 +0000
  Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Nala Ginrut <nalaginrut@gmail.com> - 2019-02-09 00:27 +0800
  Re: Best language for implementing compilers? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2019-02-08 18:36 -0500
    Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2019-02-11 12:59 +0000
      Re: Best language for implementing compilers? drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2019-02-12 09:38 -0600
        Re: Best language for implementing compilers? drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2019-02-19 11:22 -0500
          Re: Best language for implementing compilers? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2019-02-20 11:48 +0000
      Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Kaz Kylheku <157-073-9834@kylheku.com> - 2019-02-12 16:45 +0000
      Re: Best language for implementing compilers? mertesthomas@gmail.com - 2019-03-09 01:47 -0500
        Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2019-03-09 10:14 +0100
          Re: Best language for implementing compilers? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2019-03-09 22:47 -0500
          Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Kaz Kylheku <157-073-9834@kylheku.com> - 2019-03-10 05:40 +0000
        Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2019-03-09 12:34 +0000
        Re: Best language for implementing compilers? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2019-03-09 22:57 -0500
          Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Kaz Kylheku <157-073-9834@kylheku.com> - 2019-03-10 05:48 +0000
      Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Christopher F Clark <christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com> - 2019-03-10 04:13 -0700
        Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2019-03-10 15:33 +0000
          Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Christopher F Clark <christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com> - 2019-03-11 10:49 -0700
            Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2019-03-12 06:54 +0100
              Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2019-03-13 01:50 +0000
        Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2019-03-10 16:13 +0100
          Re: Best language for implementing compilers? Christopher F Clark <christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com> - 2019-03-11 10:06 -0700
        Re: Best language for implementing compilers? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2019-03-10 18:23 -0400
        Re: Best language for implementing compilers? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2019-03-10 18:58 -0400
  Re: Best language for implementing compilers? "Robin Vowels" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2019-02-09 19:58 +1100
  Best language for implementing compilers? David Lovemore <davidlovemore@gmail.com> - 2019-02-12 03:28 -0800
  Re: Best language for implementing compilers? mertesthomas@gmail.com - 2019-03-12 10:40 -0700

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