Learning to write a compiler [closed]

Answer 1

"... Let's Build a Compiler ..."

I'd second http://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/ by @sasb. Forget buying more books for the moment.

Why? Tools & language.

The language required is Pascal and if I remember correctly is based on Turbo-Pascal. It just so happens if you go to http://www.freepascal.org/ and download the Pascal compiler all the examples work straight from the page ~ http://www.freepascal.org/download.var The beaut thing about Free Pascal is you can use it almost whatever processor or OS you can care for.

Once you have mastered the lessons then try the more advanced "Dragon Book" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_book

Answer 2

I liked the Crenshaw tutorial too, because it makes it absolutely clear that a compiler is just another program that reads some input and writes some out put.

Read it.

Work it if you want, but then look at another reference on how bigger and more complete compilers are really written.

And read On Trusting Trust, to get a clue about the unobvious things that can be done in this domain.

Answer 3

The Dragon Book is definitely the "building compilers" book, but if your language isn't quite as complicated as the current generation of languages, you may want to look at the Interpreter pattern from Design Patterns.

The example in the book designs a regular expression-like language and is well thought through, but as they say in the book, it's good for thinking through the process but is effective really only on small languages. However, it is much faster to write an Interpreter for a small language with this pattern than having to learn about all the different types of parsers, yacc and lex, et cetera...

Answer 4

Python comes bundled with a python compiler written in Python. You can see the source code, and it includes all phases, from parsing, abstract syntax tree, emitting code, etc. Hack it.

Answer 5

Not included in the list so far is this book:

Basics of Compiler Design (Torben Mogensen) (from the dept. of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen)

I'm also interested in learning about compilers and plan to enter that industry in the next couple of years. This book is the ideal theory book to begin learning compilers as far as I can see. It's FREE to copy and reproduce, cleanly and carefully written and gives it to you in plain English without any code but still presents the mechanics by way of instructions and diagrams etc. Worth a look imo.

Answer 6

The LCC compiler (wikipedia) (project homepage) (github.com/drh/lcc) of Fraser and Hanson is described in their book "A Retargetable C Compiler: Design and Implementation". It is quite readable and explains the whole compiler, down to code generation.