Are there "compiler generators"?

Hi Folks,


There are lexer generators. Flex is a lexer generator.


There are parser generators. Bison is a parser generator.


Are there compiler generators?


Page 52 of the book "Crafting a Compiler with C" says this in the chapter
titled "Scanning--Theory and Practice":


Programming a scanner generator is an example of nonprocedural programming.
That is, unlike ordinary programming, which we call procedural, we do not tell
a scanner generator "how" do scan but simply "what" we want scanned. This is a
higher-level approach and in many ways a more natural one. Much recent
research in computer science is directed toward nonprocedural programming
styles. (Database query languages and Prolog, a "logic" programming language,
are nonprocedural.) Nonprocedural programming is most successful in limited
domains, such as scanning, where the range of implementation decisions that
must be automatically made is limited. Nonetheless, a long-standing (and as
yet unrealized) goal of computer scientists is to generate an entire compiler
from a specification of the properties of the source language and target
computer.


That was written in 1991. Is it still true in 2022--there are no compiler
generators?


/Roger
[There are certainly programs that will generate a combined lexer and parser
but there's a lot more to a compiler. -John]

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