Re: Compiler Construction - New to it and getting started.

TOUATI Sid <touati@nospam-prism.uvsq.fr> writes:


> I would suggest Ocaml as a programming language for a clean compiler.
> But, if the compiler would do some backend or advanced code
> optimization, I think that Ocaml wouldn't be the best choice.
>
> As I tell to my students, compilation can be seen as a formal work
> when doing simple parsing&semantic analysis&simple code generation.
> Unfortunately, many code optimization techniques in the litterature
> are completely ad-hoc, and no formal description/model can be easily
> used. Such ad-hoc techniques require to "hack" a compiler or to use
> some "C" programming inside the compiler. While this is not the best
> thing for a compiler, this is actually the situation of (maybe) almost
> all optimizing compilers.


I don't agree. First of all, most optimization techniques are
formalized in some way (data-flow analysis, control-flow analysis,
pattern recognition, etc.) and, secondly, OCaml or SML can be used to
write ad-hoc code as well as C can. I would actually say they are even
better at this than C, as you don't have to worry so much about memory
allocation/deallocation in the compiler and you can often write fairly
advanced transformations as quick hacks by using pattern matching or
standard higher-order functions such as fold and map.


Where C may be a better option than OCaml or SML is bytecode
interpreters. Here, you may want to do bit-fiddling and stuff where
you treat the same data sometimes as pointers and sometimes as
integers. This is where C's lack of type enforcement can come in
handy.


                Torben

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