Re: Language best suited for writing compilers

"Peter H. Froehlich" wrote:
> For quickly hacking up a compiler I had a quite nice experience
> with Python. There are also tools, e.g. SPARK, that help you with
> parsing and lots of other tasks. However, if you need speed, Python
> might not be a good idea. One of the drawbacks is that Python is
> dynamically typed, so you can not express as many constraints as
> you would often like, e.g. for the AST.


That was exactly the design goal of language Dino
http://cocom.sourceforge.net/dinoload.html


To make compiler prototype development easier, it has


o regular expressions matching for implementing scanners.


o very fast Earley's parser with abstract trees generation and minimal
cost error recovery.


o Powerful data structures like extensible objects, arrays and hash
tables to implement IR and optimization algorithms.


o modules implementing multiple precision arithmetic and 4, 8, 16 bytes
IEEE floating point number arithmetic.


o many other features to support development of language processors.




The next release will contain also minimal cost parsing to implement
code selection.


Although this language has still experimental status, it can be already
used for writing compilers and language processors.


Vladimir Makarov

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.