Re: Compiler implementation language preference ?

On Tuesday, 22 May 2018 18:39:07 UTC+1, Michael Justice wrote:
> Is there any preference to writing a compiler in say c instead of say
> java, fortran, basic etc? I ask cause i see many of the projects using
> either c or c++ instead of other programming languages.


> [Mostly people use what they're used to, or in languages that are easy
> to bootstrap on the machines they want to use. IBM's Fortran H
> compiler was famously written in itself, but I wouldn't write a new
> compiler in Fortran because it doesn't have great data structuring or
> dynamic storage management. (Yes, I know that Fortran 2008 is a lot
> different from Fortran 66.) -John]


Per John's remark, the last translator I wrote (a Z280
cross-assembler) was in C (and bison) principally because that's what
I usually write in! In the early '80s I wrote 2 translatory things in
ZX Spectrum Basic. (The Speccy was the only computer I had access to.)
About 1,000 lines each. Later, I translated 1 in Mallard Basic and the
other into Turbo Pascal, both on an Amstrad PCW. The translation from
Spectrum Basic to Mallard Basic was a lot harder than the translation
to Pascal, which may explain my dim view of Basic!


I bet some of my old (later) Spectrum C programs would still compile... though
I'd probably have to turn off lots of warnings!
I've learnt a few new programming languages in the past 17 years but, in my
dotage, I've mostly forgotten them again :-/

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