Re: Need advices for creating a proprietary language

> Lyn A Headley wrote
> >Writing a compiler is very hard. If you have never studied the
> > ....


Ondrej Tucny <tucny@km1.fjfi.cvut.cz> writes:
> Are you sure? I think writing a compiler is one of the easiest things,
> I've ever done. I think you need about one week to practise the basic
> algorithms and then you should be able to write a simple compiler. But
> yes, you're true if you're writing something like Ada. I wrote a
> compiler of a language may be nearsy as complex as Ada and it took me
> two years.
[Rest of the description of a simple compiler deleted]


I kind of agree with Ondrej, except I would add the following comment:


                "The difference between theory and practice?
                In theory, there is none.
                In practice, there is one."


Now, writing a simple toy that parses expressions and generates an RPN
expression is really easy, that's true. As is the development of an
algorithm to add two one-digit positive integers. For a real compiler,
that's another story, as it is another story to implement an efficient
floating-point division in hardware :-)


However, the directions given by Ondrej really make sense as a good
starting point. But if you are really interested in the subject, there
are tons of books out there that you should consider reading (who said
"The Dragon Book" ???)


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