Wirth's "Compiler Construction"

Mike Gallo asks


>Can anyone offer comments on or point me to reviews of Niklaus
>Wirth's latest book, _Compiler Construction_? Thank you.


Well, I think it is well worth having a look. As usual he does in 200
pages what most people take 800 or so to do. It's not a book for
naive students; it's terse, crisp, and all the other things you will
know about NW. As a book for teachers, and for any others who abhor
the over-complexity of modern systems it is very good indeed.


He uses Oberon as the host language to implement a compiler for a
subset of Oberon called Oberon-0, generating code for a hypothetical
RISC machine like Henessy and Patterson's DLX. He covers only
recursive descent, hand crafted compilers, spurning compiler
generators. The code has his usual attributes - almost too tight, and
with few comments or concessions to readability. Covers some
optimization, separate compilation etc. Not much use made of the OOP
features of Oberon. The book comes with a PC diskette containing all
the sources in PC, Mac and Unix format, and also a version of Oberon
for the PC that you can install.


I haven't yet seen any published reviews. There was an earlier
version in German, also published by Addison Wesley.


Pat Terry, Computer Science, Rhodes University, GRAHAMSTOWN 6140, RSA
cspt@cs.ru.ac.za or cspt@giraffe.ru.ac.za or pdterry@psg.com
Voice +27-461-318291 or +27-461-318292 FAX +27-461-311915
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