Re: Newbie question: What is the importance for a compiler to be able to compile itself?

Andrew Tomazos <andrew@tomazos.com>
Tue, 19 May 2009 05:20:36 -0700 (PDT)

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From: Andrew Tomazos <andrew@tomazos.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 05:20:36 -0700 (PDT)
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 09-05-080
Keywords: practice
Posted-Date: 19 May 2009 13:59:51 EDT

On May 19, 1:01 pm, armen...@gmail.com wrote:
> What is the importance with a compiler that is able to compile itself?


Let us define the "intended application domain" of a language as the
set of applications the language designer intended the language to be
used for.


Some languages include compilers as part of their intended application
domain (for example C), and some do not (for example XSLT).


If the intended application domain of a language X includes a compiler
for language X, than it is a good demonstration and test to implement
one.


It demonstrates that the language can "eat its own dog food".


It tests many language features such as reading and writing to
secondary storage, string handling, complex data structures and
intensive algorithms.
    -Andrew.


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