Book recommendation required

I am looking for a book on compiler design. I have dutifully looked
over the FAQ which contains a comprehensive list (my thanks to the
author). However, the short reviews listed there are not sufficient to
help me make a choice. These books usually are expensive and need to
be custom ordered; I would not like to end up with a book I dislike
:-S. Looking at the Google archives of this newsgroup did not prove to
be very helpful either. Hence this message.


I would like a book which covers in good detail the inner workings of
a compiler, without resorting to terse mathematical formalisms. Some
math is okay, though, it shouldn't be simplicity all the way either.
The book should invite the reader to try things out for himself, so
something which is just source code is not appreciated. I have some
experience with lexical scanners and parsers, having written a few
myself (and used lex and yacc). I am fluent in C, but I do not mind
the author using different languages. I'm more interested in the ideas
behing the compiler rather than the language the ideas are expressed
in.


Can someone provide me with a recommendation?


With kind regards,
Maarten
[I would be happy to update the entries in the FAQ if anyone has
more to add. I like Muchnick's book for the coverage of optimization
and back end code, Wilhelm and Maurer for their info on functional and
OO languages. For experimenters, Fraser and Hanson's book on lcc is
good, since you can then take lcc and hack on it as desired. -John]

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