Re: Best tools for writing an assembler?

Sibastien Fricker <sebastien.fricker@gmail.com> writes:


> If starting from scratch I would use a high level language and for
> performance reasons not perl. An assembler may need to assemble big
> sources and so it should be as fast as possible.


I don't agree -- nobody writes big assembly sources by hand these
days. Maybe you're thinking of compiler-generated assembly,
but I think compilers should generate machine language, not
assembly language. I like Ivan Godard's idea better.


> If writing from the scratch, I would use OCaml.


That's a good choice, but...


>...OCaml provides
> ocamllex/ocamlyacc (and also menhir which is also a lex/yacc
> replacement) which are quite similar to flex/bison.


...but I'd use Ivan Godard's idea, thus avoiding any need for
horsing around with lexing and parsing.


>...I think that
> coding in ML would permits to get a smaller source file and easier to
> read. But of course you need to learn a new programming language...
> See http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/html/book-ora107.html
> for an ocamllex/ocamlyacc sample.


Well, learning a new programming language is generally a good idea,
and fun, especially if that language has interesting ideas.


- Bob

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