Re: Newbie question: What is the importance for a compiler to be able to compile itself?

Ken Rose <rose@acm.org>
Tue, 19 May 2009 10:02:34 -0700

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From: Ken Rose <rose@acm.org>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 10:02:34 -0700
Organization: TeraNews.com
References: 09-05-080
Keywords: practice
Posted-Date: 19 May 2009 14:00:52 EDT

armencho@gmail.com wrote:
> HI all,
>
> What is the importance with a compiler that is able to compile itself?


It seems to me that being able to compile yourself has some real value,
but is sometimes taken to foolish lengths. If your compiler is written
in its target language, it's a good test case, since it's a complex
program that probably hits quite a few corner cases in the language
implementation. On the other hand, lots of very useful languages are
terrible choices for a compiler implementation. That's a different
flamewar, though.


    - ken



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