Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language

Dupont de Dinechin Christophe <ddd@hplisolx.grenoble.hp.com>
15 Mar 1998 00:25:24 -0500

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
[2 earlier articles]
Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language sandy.harris@sympatico.ca (1998-03-06)
Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language joachim.durchholz@munich.netsurf.de (Joachim Durchholz) (1998-03-07)
Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language mc@hack.org (MC) (1998-03-07)
Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language markh@usai.asiainfo.com (Mark Harrison) (1998-03-07)
Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language nixon@softlab.se (Leif Nixon) (1998-03-12)
Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language tucny@km1.fjfi.cvut.cz (Ondrej Tucny) (1998-03-12)
Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language ddd@hplisolx.grenoble.hp.com (Dupont de Dinechin Christophe) (1998-03-15)
Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language byte@lmn.pub.ro (Laurentiu Badea) (1998-03-18)
Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language kochenbu@khe.siemens.de (Andreas Kochenburger) (1998-03-30)
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From: Dupont de Dinechin Christophe <ddd@hplisolx.grenoble.hp.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 15 Mar 1998 00:25:24 -0500
Organization: Hewlett Packard Cupertino Site
References: 98-03-039 98-03-107
Keywords: design, practice

> Lyn A Headley wrote
> >Writing a compiler is very hard. If you have never studied the
> > ....


Ondrej Tucny <tucny@km1.fjfi.cvut.cz> writes:
> Are you sure? I think writing a compiler is one of the easiest things,
> I've ever done. I think you need about one week to practise the basic
> algorithms and then you should be able to write a simple compiler. But
> yes, you're true if you're writing something like Ada. I wrote a
> compiler of a language may be nearsy as complex as Ada and it took me
> two years.
[Rest of the description of a simple compiler deleted]


I kind of agree with Ondrej, except I would add the following comment:


                "The difference between theory and practice?
                In theory, there is none.
                In practice, there is one."


Now, writing a simple toy that parses expressions and generates an RPN
expression is really easy, that's true. As is the development of an
algorithm to add two one-digit positive integers. For a real compiler,
that's another story, as it is another story to implement an efficient
floating-point division in hardware :-)


However, the directions given by Ondrej really make sense as a good
starting point. But if you are really interested in the subject, there
are tons of books out there that you should consider reading (who said
"The Dragon Book" ???)


--


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