Re: How long does it take to build a compiler?

Appolgies for my question being not clear enough.
The syntax of the language I'm thinking of is similar to the one found
in some statistical program packages like SAS or SPSS. (I don't know
SAS and SPSS carry compilers. I need one though.)


So suppose you are building a compiler for SAS using its
syntax. How would you do it? How long would it take?


>More relevant questions
>are: How complex are the control and data structures? Nested control and
>naming scopes?


It could have nested LOOPs but that's all it has.


>Type declarations? Records (structures in C-speak)?


REAL, DOUBLE PRECISION, BINARY and SETS are to be included. No complex
record/struct to be included though.


>(In the worst case, if you have to do compile-time type
>inference, you are in for some exciting programming.)


No inference mechanism.


> How rich a runtime environment does it need and do you have to write
> all the support code?


I already have most of the support codes in the form of C++ library.


>Do you have to create stand-alone executables, or could you generate byte
>codes and write an interpreter for them? Can you use C or Basic or
>something as an intermediate language and use existing compilers to turn
>them into machine language and use their libraries?


I need to run a stand-alone executables. No interpreter is possible
although translating to C++ or C may be a possibility.


youngwhan.
[As a rough guess, I'd hope that if you could use C or C++ as your
intermediate language and had a reasonably skilled compiler person, you
could get something demo-able in a month, probably three times that to
get something usable as a product. -John]
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