Re: Something "simpler" than the Dragon Book

Susan Thibodeau <smct@frontiernet.net> wrote:
>In particular, I would appreciate references to any book that provides
>a (relatively) simple and gentle introduction to how
>compilers/interpreters work. The book should be meaty enough to
>provide a decent foundation for understanding Aho, Sethu, and Ullman's
>"Compilers" book (a.k.a. the Dragon Book).


I book we used for my compiler course (@University of Waterloo) was
called "Crafting a Compiler" by Fischer and Leblanc. It is fairly
easy to follow. The book basically shows you how to implement a
compiler for a workable subset of the Ada language. Everything is
example driven using pseudo-C. Apparently, some of the tools
described in the book (including a lexer and LALR parser generator)
are available somewhere on the net. The main weak points of the book
are that it is too old to adequately cover object-oriented techniques
and, perhaps more importantly, it falls short of describing in depth
ways of doing semantic analysis using attribute grammars (although
AG's are described along with some algorithms). But if you're happy
with the "hackedness" of using a parser-driven semantic stack, then
you shouldn't have a problem.


Regards,


Cam
--
/ Cameron Bateman
/ 4B MATH/CS
/ University of Waterloo

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