Re: To get things started...

On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 12:45:50 +0100, Bart Lateur wrote:
>
>AKA "The Dragon Book". You're not the only one to mention this book on
>this list.
>
>IMO, this book is really thick to crawl through, and in the end, it's
>all just theory, you still won't be able to build a compiler, or an
>optimizer in case you already have a compiler. Heh. In short: are there
>any more *practical* "how do I build my own compiler" books, that people
>can wholeheartedly recommend?

I recommend _Compiler Design in C_, by Allen I. Holub.  It's not in
print anymore.  It's ISBN 0-13-155045-4, published by Prentice Hall.

It covers a lot of compiler theory and uses it to implement a small
C compiler.  Well, not right away; first it covers lexical analysis
and implements a lexx clone, then it covers grammars and implements
a yacc clone.  Then it covers code generation and optimization, but
it does finally get around to making a C compiler with those tools.

The implementations come as C listings with line-by-line narrative,
so there's something concrete to grasp onto if the text gets weird.

-- Rocco Caputo / [email protected] / poe.perl.org