Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text?

On 17 April 2012 22:28, <compilers@is-not-my.name> wrote:
> .... I'm a good practical programmer and have experience with
> writing my own libraries for all sorts of data structures and
> functions and am not a cut and paste sort of fellow at all. I hope to
> find a text or two for a guy like me who isn't a professor! Thanks for
> your suggestions.


I understand your squabbles with wanting a very straight forward text
to work from. I had similar annoyances although I have a degree in
Math and Computer science maybe that made it a little easier but I
personally think understanding the ideas behind grammar and state
machines etc all that theory is actually very straight forward it just
can look obscure but it is kind of essential to know otherwise you can
end up making a lot of mistakes without really understanding why. But
that's not to say just taking your time to understand from first
principles you wont get there it just would take more time.


I personally found the Lex and Yacc o'reilly book extremely insightful
because if you work though the bison manual the examples they give can
really make you see how things work to a very basic level and its very
easy to see how it can be extended very quickly. Another is the dragon
book i still think although there is a lot of obscurity in it, but Its
a classic book for a reason its actually really really good. There are
a few other online pdf manuals i don't have the links for but a very
quick search though this mailing list will turn them up. Some of them
a very much to the point. The biggest point of all is compiler and os
work isn't very rewarding for a very long time when you start working
at it. As in you can go for ages and ages and not feel like your
getting anywhere then all of a sudden it can click. Well that's how i
feel sometimes.


I hope this gives you some hope because its not the easiest subject to
tackle. There is no substitution to just working at something just
starting your own small basic compiler project to understand
expressions will give you very much of what you want to know for the
basics in my opinion and just work at that in your own time.


--Phil
[Thanks for the suggestion of lex & yacc. I revised it a couple
of years ago, the new edition is called flex & bison. -John]

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