Crafting A Compiler

Software -- Programming Languages.

Despite using them every day, most software engineers know little about how programming languages are designed and implemented. For many, their only experience with that corner of computer science was a terrifying "compilers" class that they suffered through in undergrad and tried to blot from their memory as soon as they had scribbled their last NFA to DFA conversion on the final exam. That fearsome reputation belies a field that is rich with useful techniques and not so difficult as some of its practitioners might have you believe. A better understanding of how programming languages are built will make you a stronger software engineer and teach you concepts and data structures you'll use the rest of your coding days. You might even have fun. This book teaches you everything you need to know to implement a full-featured, efficient scripting language. You'll learn both high-level concepts around parsing and semantics and gritty details like bytecode representation and garbage collection. Your brain will light up with new ideas, and your hands will get dirty and calloused. Starting from main(), you will build a language that features rich syntax, dynamic typing, garbage collection, lexical scope, first-class functions, closures, classes, and inheritance. All packed into a few thousand lines of clean, fast code that you thoroughly understand because you wrote each one yourself.

This extremely practical, hands-on approach to building compilers using the C programming language includes numerous examples of working code from a real compiler and covers such advanced topics as code generation, optimization, and real-world parsing. It is an ideal reference and tutorial. 0805321667B04062001

"Modern Compiler Design" makes the topic of compiler design more accessible by focusing on principles and techniques of wide application. By carefully distinguishing between the essential (material that has a high chance of being useful) and the incidental (material that will be of benefit only in exceptional cases) much useful information was packed in this comprehensive volume. The student who has finished this book can expect to understand the workings of and add to a language processor for each of the modern paradigms, and be able to read the literature on how to proceed. The first provides a firm basis, the second potential for growth.

This new, expanded textbook describes all phases of a modern compiler: lexical analysis, parsing, abstract syntax, semantic actions, intermediate representations, instruction selection via tree matching, dataflow analysis, graph-coloring register allocation, and runtime systems. It includes good coverage of current techniques in code generation and register allocation, as well as functional and object-oriented languages, that are missing from most books. In addition, more advanced chapters are now included so that it can be used as the basis for a two-semester or graduate course. The most accepted and successful techniques are described in a concise way, rather than as an exhaustive catalog of every possible variant. Detailed descriptions of the interfaces between modules of a compiler are illustrated with actual C header files. The first part of the book, Fundamentals of Compilation, is suitable for a one-semester first course in compiler design. The second part, Advanced Topics, which includes the advanced chapters, covers the compilation of object-oriented and functional languages, garbage collection, loop optimizations, SSA form, loop scheduling, and optimization for cache-memory hierarchies.

This is a comprehensive account of the semantics and the implementation of the whole Lisp family of languages, namely Lisp, Scheme and related dialects. It describes 11 interpreters and 2 compilers, including very recent techniques of interpretation and compilation. The book is in two parts. The first starts from a simple evaluation function and enriches it with multiple name spaces, continuations and side-effects with commented variants, while at the same time the language used to define these features is reduced to a simple lambda-calculus. Denotational semantics is then naturally introduced. The second part focuses more on implementation techniques and discusses precompilation for fast interpretation: threaded code or bytecode; compilation towards C. Some extensions are also described such as dynamic evaluation, reflection, macros and objects. This will become the new standard reference for people wanting to know more about the Lisp family of languages: how they work, how they are implemented, what their variants are and why such variants exist. The full code is supplied (and also available over the Net). A large bibliography is given as well as a considerable number of exercises. Thus it may also be used by students to accompany second courses on Lisp or Scheme.

This entirely revised second edition of Engineering a Compiler is full of technical updates and new material covering the latest developments in compiler technology. In this comprehensive text you will learn important techniques for constructing a modern compiler. Leading educators and researchers Keith Cooper and Linda Torczon combine basic principles with pragmatic insights from their experience building state-of-the-art compilers. They will help you fully understand important techniques such as compilation of imperative and object-oriented languages, construction of static single assignment forms, instruction scheduling, and graph-coloring register allocation. In-depth treatment of algorithms and techniques used in the front end of a modern compiler Focus on code optimization and code generation, the primary areas of recent research and development Improvements in presentation including conceptual overviews for each chapter, summaries and review questions for sections, and prominent placement of definitions for new terms Examples drawn from several different programming languages

A guide to writing computer code covers such topics as variable naming, presentation style, error handling, and security.

This second edition of Grune and Jacobs’ brilliant work presents new developments and discoveries that have been made in the field. Parsing, also referred to as syntax analysis, has been and continues to be an essential part of computer science and linguistics. Parsing techniques have grown considerably in importance, both in computer science, ie. advanced compilers often use general CF parsers, and computational linguistics where such parsers are the only option. They are used in a variety of software products including Web browsers, interpreters in computer devices, and data compression programs; and they are used extensively in linguistics.

Written by the creator of the Unicon programming language, this book will show you how to implement programming languages to reduce the time and cost of creating applications for new or specialized areas of computing Key Features Reduce development time and solve pain points in your application domain by building a custom programming language Learn how to create parsers, code generators, file readers, analyzers, and interpreters Create an alternative to frameworks and libraries to solve domain-specific problems Book Description The need for different types of computer languages is growing rapidly and developers prefer creating domain-specific languages for solving specific application domain problems. Building your own programming language has its advantages. It can be your antidote to the ever-increasing size and complexity of software. In this book, you'll start with implementing the frontend of a compiler for your language, including a lexical analyzer and parser. The book covers a series of traversals of syntax trees, culminating with code generation for a bytecode virtual machine. Moving ahead, you'll learn how domain-specific language features are often best represented by operators and functions that are built into the language, rather than library functions. We'll conclude with how to implement garbage collection, including reference counting and mark-and-sweep garbage collection. Throughout the book, Dr. Jeffery weaves in his experience of building the Unicon programming language to give better context to the concepts where relevant examples are provided in both Unicon and Java so that you can follow the code of your choice of either a very high-level language with advanced features, or a mainstream language. By the end of this book, you'll be able to build and deploy your own domain-specific languages, capable of compiling and running programs. What you will learn Perform requirements analysis for the new language and design language syntax and semantics Write lexical and context-free grammar rules for common expressions and control structures Develop a scanner that reads source code and generate a parser that checks syntax Build key data structures in a compiler and use your compiler to build a syntax-coloring code editor Implement a bytecode interpreter and run bytecode generated by your compiler Write tree traversals that insert information into the syntax tree Implement garbage collection in your language Who this book is for This book is for software developers interested in the idea of inventing their own language or developing a domain-specific language. Computer science students taking compiler construction courses will also find this book highly useful as a practical guide to language implementation to supplement more theoretical textbooks. Intermediate-level knowledge and experience working with a high-level language such as Java or the C++ language are expected to help you get the most out of this book.