Re: Compiler books

On 30 Aug 2006 14:09:59 -0400, Tommy Thorn <tommy.thorn@gmail.com> wrote:
> Martin Filteau wrote:
>
> > I would like to have your suggestions. I'm looking for a compiler book
> > with emphasis on instruction selection & register allocation.
> > Specifically, for generating code from C expressions.
>
> Great question. I too find most of the compiler books too introductory
> and too focused on the front end (parsing, sigh). ...


I always liked Richard Bornat's Understanding and Writing Compilers
(published by MacMillan in 1979 but perhaps not for the US market). To
quote an advertising campaign here in England --- did exactly what it
said on the cover. Bornat concentrated upon code generation (and not
for idealised machines either) and run-time support. No idealised
machines, no simple languages --- he covered syntactic and semantic
issues involved in writing compilers for Algol-68 and Simula-67 plus
the algorithms were presented in BCPL. Only criticism of Bornat's book
I have is his "camera ready copy" from a daisy wheel printer; much
worse than Gries chain printer.


Equally ancient but of good service is Bob Hopgood's Compiling
Techniques. Nice section in there too on code generation. (Though I
did augment the book with his lecture notes.)


> ...Thanks for your
> question, it prompted me to check whatever happed to the Dragon book.
> Apparently, the 2nd edition is due to be released THE DAY AFTER
> TOMORROW! (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Compilers and
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321486811/)


Surely that is the "third" edition; I know the publisher says second
but on my bookshelves there are green (1977) and red (186) dragons and
a slot for the purple should it ever be published before I die or
before Knuth finishes all seven volumes his Art of Computer
Programming, whichever happens first.


Amazon.co.uk has two different dates for the purple dragon book: 31
August 2006 (but they can't get hold of a copy) or 31 January
2007. And somewhere there is a bookseller still trying to locate me a
copy of Fran Allen's much announced but never published book.


Regards, Trevor


<>< Re: deemed!
[If anyone gets an actual copy of the new dragon book, please tell us
about it. It's missed innumerable publication dates. -John]

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