Re: info on giving a compiler course wanted

Peter Knijnenburg <peterk@cs.leidenuniv.nl>, writes:
> Next Spring semester I'm going to teach a course on compiler
> construction at Leiden University. I'm going to use `Compilers:
> principles, techniques and tools' by Aho, Sethi and Ullman. Since
> this is the first time I'm teaching this course,


Long-timers who've been involved in compilers refer to Aho/Sethi/Ullman
as 'The Dragon Book', just as the experienced in the APL community who uses
the Gilman and Rose book refer to it as 'The Red Book' because of its
chinese red cover.


> Also, I want to give some fairly difficult programming exercises.
>
> * Does anybody have a small compiler available that can be used for
> such exercises?


Be a little more specific as to what you want to drill for. I have about
three different compilers that could be used. One is a Basic interpreter
written in C; another is a 'toy' pascal compiler written in Pascal, the
'Facilis' compiler - one advantage is that the language is compiled by a
program in the same language; the other possibilities include the Pascal
to C and Fortran to C translators.


I also have a couple of related programs: one translates assembly into the
inline commands that are needed for the older Turbo Pascal language.
(Turbo Pascal versions 3 and 4 required the machine code to be specified
as hexadecimal digits). Another translates a binary file back into
assembly language, e.g. a disassembler.


Also, I have a real, working Pascal Compiler written under contract for
the National Bureau of Standards. It's very large, though, and might be
too much for a first class. The Facilis compiler creates its own internal
machine code then executes it itself, and it's not very large; it might be
easier to understand.


If you (or other readers) are interested in any of these, let me know and
I'll uuencode them and mail them to you.


---
Paul Robinson - Paul@TDR.COM
--

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