Re: Is it just me or...

Jay Cole (jaycole@bgn.mindspring.com) wrote:


: 3) Are there any other books out there besides "The Design of an
: Optimizing Compiler" by Wulf? Even though this book is out of print
: and I had to get my copy through UMI, I have not been able to find
: another decent code generation book "theory-wise" than this one. His
: ideas on register allocation and jump optimization were a great
: stepping off point for me. Any other recommendations out there on
: this type of code optimization/generation or perhaps other techniques,
: methods?


I always had the feeling that the only big success secret in complier
construction is code generation, and as such - the methods are usually
secret.


Parsing as taught in books, is almost a closed subject. Sometimes you
can play some hacks during lexing, or even during the parsing it self,
but most of time you can rely on the standard methods, and use
pre-built tools.


Code generation as taught in books is, however, not enough. It is not
fast enough, easy enough to use, and doesn't produce great code unless
you tweak it in many ways.


If one wants to learn how to produce good code, one has to look to
commercial compilers, in order to learn some real methods. This, by
nature, are usually proprietry.


Since code generation is more of an art than a science, most methods
are not general, and are specific to a certain enviornment. This makes
life tougher.


For these reasons, I advise people interested in compilers to produce
a working parser fast - and concentrate on code generation and
run-time enviornments. If you can the best way to learn these topics
is by dissecting working compilers....
  --
Ehud Lamm mslamm@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il
--

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