Re: Bootstraping compilers ?

Torben Fgidius Mogensen wrote:
(snip)


> When writing a compiler, it is more important to write it in a
> language that is suitable for writing compilers than to write it in
> the language that it compiles. Many languages are unsuited for
> writing compilers, so by insisting on bootstrapping, you can make
> things much more complicated than necessary.
(snip)


> [But it was so cool that they wrote Fortran H in itself. -John]


Well, some parts are in assembler, I believe mostly the I/O routines
and the library (shared with Fortran G).


Also, they added bitwise logical intrinsic functions to the compiler
so that they could use them.


My favorite Fortran H story is that they used six trees for the symbol
table instead of a hash table. In one manual IBM recommends that for
faster compilation variable names should be evenly distributed between
one and six characters long. (No mention of using descriptive names.)


Then again, what choice did they have? Assembler or COBOL? Maybe
ALGOL, but PL/I wasn't ready until later.


-- glen
[The library is all assembler, the compiler itself was mostly in extended
Fortran. And you're right, at the time the alternatives were all worse.
-John]

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