Need starting tips for a new interpreter / parser

Hello,


I am at the project planning level of making a new parser /
interpreter for a reporting tool.


It will be completely driven by a well defined (pascal like grammar)
language source file.


It will support assignment statements, loops, conditions and all the
other usuall stuff a language should have.


I have already done the work of defining the language, and are about
to start checking the language.


I just want to have some tips from you experts on how to plan the
interpreting phase. Should I build a parse tree? Check byte for byte?
Build a "reserved words" table?


Could someone outline the basic steps for me.


Best regards


Harald Fjerdingstad
[Sounds like you've skipped the first step, which is to decide whether
you really need to invent yet another little interpreter. There are
several high-quality freely available extension languages including
Python and TCL which are specifically designed to be programming
frameworks into which one can drop application-specific commands and
functions. Writing even a bad interpreter is a fair amount of work,
so it usually makes more sense to skip that step and start with a good
interpreter that already exists. -John]

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