Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Expires: 1 May 07 23:59:00 GMT
Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news2.wam.umd.edu!elk.ncren.net!usenet.osg.ufl.edu!news.lightlink.com!xuxa.iecc.com!post-bot
Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2007 07:00:00 EDT
Newsgroups: comp.compilers,news.answers,comp.answers
Subject: comp.compilers monthly message and Frequently Asked Questions
From: [email protected] (John R. Levine)
Organization: Compilers Central
Keywords: administrivia
Approved: [email protected]
Followup-To: poster
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Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.compilers:29084 news.answers:313398 comp.answers:64723

Archive-name: compilers/faq
Last-modified: $Date: 2006/11/03 22:12:00 $

This is the comp.compilers monthly message.  Changes since last month are
indicated by the usual marks in the right margin.

Contents:

-- What is comp.compilers?
-- How do I receive it?
-- How do I submit a message?
-- What happens to submitted messages?
-- What message formats are appropriate?
-- What topics are and aren't appropriate?
-- Are help-wanted messages allowed?
-- Why wasn't my message posted?
-- How do I respond to the author of a message?
-- How do I contact the moderator?
-- Are back issues available?

-- Some Frequently Asked Questions:

* Where can I get a C or C++ grammar in yacc?
* Where can I get the Gnu C compiler?
* Are there other free C compilers?
* Where can I get a free compiler for MS Windows?
* Where can I get a Fortran grammar in yacc or a Fortran compiler?
* Where can I get Modula-2, Pascal, Ada, or SQL grammars in yacc?
* Where can I get a Cobol grammar in yacc?
* Where can I get a Basic grammar in yacc?
* Where can I get a QBasic compiler?
* Where can I get a PL/I or PL/M grammar?
* What other sources of grammars are available?
* Where can I get free versions of yacc and lex ?
* Are there versions of yacc and lex for MS-DOS?
* Are there C++ or Pascal versions of yacc and lex?
* What other compilers and tools are freely available?
* How can I get started with yacc and lex and compiler writing in general?
* Where can I FTP the sources to the programs in Holub's "Compiler
 Design in C" or Mak's "Writing Compilers and Interpreters" ?
* Where can I learn about garbage collection ?
* Where can I find specs for Intel object files?

-- What is comp.compilers?

It is a moderated usenet news group addressing the topics of compilers in
particular and programming language design and implementation in general.
It started in 1986 as a moderated mailing list, but interest quickly grew to
the point where it was promoted to a news group.  Recent topics have
included optimization techniques, language design issues, announcements of
new compiler tools, and book reviews.

Messages come from a wide variety of people ranging from undergraduate
students to well-known experts in industry and academia.  Authors live all
over the world -- there are regular messages from the U.S, Canada, Europe,
Australia, and Japan, with occasional ones from as far away as Malaysia.
I cannot tell how large the readership is, since the anarchic nature of
usenet makes it impossible to tell who reads it, but a reasonable guess is
that the total is over 100,000, which would make it by far the most widely
read medium on the topic in the world.

Unless there is specific language to the contrary, each message represents
only the personal opinion of its author.  I claim no compilation copyright on
comp.compilers.  As far as I am concerned, anyone can reproduce any message
for any purpose.  Individual authors may retain rights to their messages,
although I will not knowingly post anything that does not permit unlimited
distribution in any form.  If you find comp.compilers useful in writing a
book, producing a product, etc., I would appreciate an acknowledgement of
usenet and comp.compilers.

-- How do I receive it?

The easiest way is to read comp.compilers on a system that gets usenet news.

If you don't have access to usenet news, it's also available via
E-mail via a Majordomo mailing list.  To subscribe, a person should
send e-mail to [email protected] with one line in the mail
message (not in the subject!)  That line should read:

       subscribe compilers

If you want to get daily digests rather than individual messages,
send this instead:

       subscribe-set compilers digest

You will get a confirmation message that you have to read and respond to
in order to complete your subscription.

To get off the list the subscriber should send e-mail to the same address
with this message:

       unsubscribe compilers

If you have problems getting on or off the list, please contact me.  In
particular, if you want to use an address other than your own personal mail
address, you have to ask me to set it up.  If I receive bounce messages for
an address on the mailing list for ten messages in a row, it's
automatically deleted.  If this happens to you and your address
subsequently becomes reachable again, you can resubscribe.

-- How do I submit a message?

Mail it to [email protected].  I review messages nearly every day, usually
including weekends, and most messages are posted to the net within a day after
I receive them.  Occasionally when I go out of town there may be up to a
week's delay, though I try to send out a message when that will happen.

Most net news systems will automatically turn posted messages into
mail to compilers, but some don't do that correctly.  Please mail your
contributions unless you're sure your posting software works
correctly.

When you send a message to compilers, I understand that to mean that you
want me to post it to usenet, which means it will be sent to tens of
thousands of potential readers at thousands of computers all around the
world.  It may also appear in a printed comp.compilers annual and other
books, in printed journals, in on-line and off-line archives, CD-ROMs, and
anywhere else that some reader decides to use it.

If you don't want me to post something, send it instead to compilers-request.
(See below.)

-- What happens to submitted messages?

Barring mail problems, they arrive in a special mailbox here at iecc, which
sends an automated confirmation message that each has been received.  If
they're appropriate to post, I then edit them a little, remove cute
signatures, and then post them to usenet.  If I think a message needs more
editing than that but is otherwise worth posting, I return it to the author
for rewriting.  Other messages are discarded (see below.)

If I see that the automatically generated confirmation message bounced, I
discard the message.  If you want your messages to be posted, please be
sure the From: or Reply-To: line contains your correct e-mail address.

-- What message formats are appropriate?

Plain old ASCII.  No MIME, uuencoded, zipped, LaTeX, HTML, NeXTmail, RTF,
GIF, gzip, MS Exchange, or anything else, just ASCII, because a lot of the
readership still can't handle anything else.  Messages received in the
broken HTML sent by misconfigured versions of mail programs such as Outlook
Express are usually discarded, since had you actually wanted people to read
your message, you could have sent something legible.

Also, keep line lengths to between 70 and 80 characters, and don't justify
lines with extra white space nor indent the whole message with white space.
Messages received entirely in lower case are subject to gratuitous
recapitalization.  (Your moderator has strong aesthetic opinions.)

If you want to make something non-ASCII available to the readership, put it
on an FTP or WWW server and send in a descriptive note with the URL.
Material of general interest can go on the archive server here.  Send me a
message at [email protected] if you have something for the
archive.

-- What topics are and aren't appropriate?

Any message discussing aspects of compiler design and implementation is
appropriate.  Language design is usually OK as well insofar as it affects
compiler design, until it drifts off into theological issues like where the
semicolon goes.

Questions about particular compilers, programming languages, and systems
should go to newsgroups about the language or system.

"For sale" messages should go to one of the misc.forsale or regional
forsale groups.

I post one announcement per conference, for any conference with a topic
relevant to compilers.  I usually post student offers to share a room at a
conference, and should probably digest them as well.

Postings announcing commercial products are welcome so long as there
is substantially more technical content than hype.

For technical reasons, I can't cross-post messages to other moderated groups,
except one or two like comp.parallel with whom I have an informal agreement
to allow cross-posts.

-- Are help-wanted messages allowed?

``Help wanted'' and ``Position Available'' messages are collected each week
and posted in a digest every Sunday.  Jobs remaining open may be re-posted
once a month.  Since comp.compilers readers live all over the world, please
be sure that your message includes some hint about the location of the job,
whether you will consider relocating people who live somewhere else, and
whether you'll consider applicants are are not residents of your country.
Messages from recruiters are OK, but they must advertise actual specific
job openings and must at least describe the location and nature of the
position.  (That is, "senior compiler devloper in Bay Area" is fine, "great
jobs nationwide" is not.)

-- Why wasn't my message posted?

The main reasons I don't post a message are that I never received it in the
first place, it appears more appropriate for another group, the message is
too garbled to fix, it contains too much quoted material relative to the
amount of new material, or I don't understand it.  Another possibility is
that a message doesn't have a valid return e-mail address.

When you respond to a previous article, you MUST edit down the quoted
material to the minimum needed to remind readers about the topic.  In the
past I usually did such editing myself, but with the increasing number of
messages, I just don't have time any more and discard such messages.  If
you can't take the time to edit your message, neither can I.  The mail
receipt robot makes a guess about the amount of quoted material in each
message and sends a warning in response if a message appears to have more
quoted than new stuff.  Unless it guessed wrong, please edit and resumbit
your message if you want it to appear.

I discard messages that say "reply to me because I don't read this group",
and forward spams back to the appropriate postmaster.  Messages from
anonymous or anonymized addresses are not acceptable, although I could be
persuaded to post a message with the sender's identity removed given a
plausible reason.

I also discard messages with invalid return addresses and in non-text
formats, as discussed above.

If a message asks a simple question I sometimes answer it myself rather than
posting it.  If you ask a question answered in the FAQ, discussed to death in
the past, or appropriate for a different group, you'll get a form response.

If you send in a message and don't either see it posted or receive an
acknowledgement from the robot, it probably got lost in the mail and you
should contact me, preferably via a different mail route.

-- How do I respond to the author of a message?

I try to be sure that every message contains valid From: and Reply-To:
headers.  The automatic "reply" commands in most news readers let you send
mail to the author.  If you're replying to a message in a digest, be sure
to respond to the author of the particular message, not to the pseudo-author
of the digest.

Sometimes mail to an author bounces, because the return address is mistyped
or otherwise bad.  Please don't ask me to forward it, since my machine is
no better connected than anyone else's.  (It's just another node on the
Internet.)  If you send me a message obviously intended for the author of
an item, I will discard it on the theory that if it wasn't important enough
for you to send it to the right place, it isn't important enough for me,
either.

-- How do I contact the moderator?

Send me mail at [email protected].  I treat messages to
compilers-request as private messages to me unless they state that they are
for publication.

-- Are back issues available?

I have complete archives going back to the original mailing list in
1986.  The archives now fill over 58 megabytes, and are growing at
about 500K per month.  You can retrieve messages by full text search
or by message number at the compilers web site at
http://compilers.iecc.com/.  All the articles in the archive are
indexed in Google and other search engines so you can also use any of
them, with a tag like site:compilers.iecc.com to tell it to return
pages from the archive.

People with ftp access can get them from
ftp://ftp.iecc.com/pub/articles.  The FTP archives contain a gzipped
Unix mailbox format file for each month, with names like 91-08.gz.
Directory ftp://ftp.iecc.com/pub/index contains table of contents
files, one for each year.

An RSS feed for the compilers web site is available at
http://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/rss.  By default it shows five
articles, but you can tell it to show up to 100 articles by adding
/n=NN to the end of the URL, where NN is the number of articles you
want to see.

I also published a printed edition of the 1990 messages grouped by
thread and topic, and with some indexes, and may publish subsequent
editions.  (If you'd be interested in editing books for later years,
let me know.)  I still have a few copies of the 1990 book for sale;
send email to [email protected] for details.  Yes, we take
plastic.


-- Some Frequently Asked Questions:

NOTE: Many issues are discussed occasionally on comp.compilers, but not
frequently enought to make the FAQ list.  If you have a question but the
answer isn't in the FAQ, you may well be able to get good background by
reading the appropriate articles in the archive.  Please at least visit
the archive at http://compilers.iecc.com and do a little searching.

The various files that I mention below that I have are in the compilers FTP
archive at ftp://ftp.iecc.com/pub/file/.

* Where can I get a C or C++ grammar in yacc?

Edward D. Willink has a complete parser included as part of his
Flexible Object Generator (FOG) project at
http://www.computing.surrey.ac.uk/research/dsrg/fog/

Jim Roskind's well-known C and C++ grammars are in the FTP archive, as
is a C grammar written by Jeff Lee.  Dave Jones posted a parser as
message 91-09-030.  Another C grammar was posted to comp.sources.misc
in June 1990, v13 i52, archive name ansi-c_su.  GCC used to use a yacc
parser for C, but now uses a hand-written recursive-descent parser

Also see cTool (formerly ctree), which parses C code into parse trees
and makes symbol tables, described in message 95-07-114.
   http://sourceforge.net/projects/ctool/

* Where can I get the Gnu C compiler?

GCC is a high-quality free compiler for C, C++, Fortran, Java, and
some other languages. (Free is not the same as public domain, see the
GCC distribution for details.)  It is available in source from
http://gcc.gnu.org.  You need an existing C compiler and libraries to
bootstrap it.

* Are there other free C compilers?

lcc is the retargetable compiler for ANSI C described in `A Retargetable C
Compiler: Design and Implementation' (Benjamin/Cummings, 1995, ISBN
0-8053-1670-1). lcc is in production use at Princeton University and AT&T
Bell Laboratories.  The current version of lcc generates code for the
SPARC, MIPS R3000 and 386 under DOS (no libraries for DOS are available
yet).  The code generator generator is available too as a icon program, and
a C version is available as of version 3.5.  There are mailing lists
lcc{,-bugs}@cs.princeton.edu, managed by [email protected].  The
object code is not great, but the compiler is ANSI compatible and is small
and fast.  Lcc uses a hard-coded C parser because it's faster than yacc,
and now includes a preprocessor.  Lcc is available, along with docs and a
sample chapter of the book http://www.CS.Princeton.EDU/software/lcc/

Thanks to Horst von Brand <[email protected]> and
Tom Harwood <[email protected]> for this info.

Also see Open Watcom, below.

* Where can I get a free compiler for MS Windows?

A package called CYGWIN from Red Hat (who bought Cygnus Solutions) is
based on GCC.  It includes C and C++ along with Unix emulation tools
and libraries.  It can build either GUI or console applications.  It's
unsupported but works pretty well, is widely used within Red Hat, and
at the price, it's hard to complain.  Info at http:/cygwin.com/ Thanks
to David Taylor <[email protected]> for this info.

Also see http://www.mingw.org/, Minimalist GNU For Windows, which is like
Cygwin but smaller and doesn't try to be full Posix.

A development system called "djgpp" by DJ Delorie <[email protected]> is based
on gcc and other GNU programs, and runs on 386 or higher PCs running
MS-DOS.  DJGPP also has Pascal, FORTRAN, Ada, Bison and Flex for MS-DOS.
It also has many other GNU tools that programmers often need, like emacs,
make, fileutils, shellutils, textutils, sed, awk, perl, etc.  This is all
available from ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/ or
http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/

Another DOS version of GCC called EMX is at
ftp://ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/pub/comp/os/os2/devtools/emx+gcc.

lcc-win32, a version of lcc for windows 95/NT can be downloaded from
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32/

Another C compiler with source is available at:
http://members.tripod.com/~ladsoft/.  (Thanks to Quinn Tyler Jackson
<[email protected]>.)

The Open-Watcom compilers at http://www.openwatcom.org/, include free
compilers for C, C++, Fortran 77, and an x86 assembler, with full
source available, for DOS, Windows, and OS/2.

* Where can I get a Fortran grammar in yacc or a Fortran compiler?

I have a small subset parser in the archive at ftp.iecc.com.  The F2C
Fortran to C translator is a respectable Fortran system (so long as you
have a C compiler to compile its output and its libraries) and contains
a full F77 parser and is available in source form via FTP from
netlib.bell-labs.com and by mail from [email protected].
GNU Fortran (http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/) includes a parser for Fortran
95.

The Open Directory Project lists a variety of Fortran compilers at
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Fortran/Compilers/.
Also see Open-Watcom, above.

* Where can I get Modula-2, Pascal, Ada, or SQL grammars in yacc?

I have one each of those, too, in the archive at ftp.iecc.com, though I
haven't tried to use any of them.

According to the comp.lang.ada FAQ, a yacc grammar for Ada 95 is available:

ftp://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/public/AdaIC/standards/95lrm_rat/grammar9x.y

and a lex grammar for Ada 95 is available:

ftp://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/public/AdaIC/standards/95lrm_rat/lexer9x.l

There's an Ada front end called GNAT for GCC, available with the rest
of the GCC suite.

* Where can I get a free Cobol grammar in yacc?

See message 99-06-079 for a free Cobol compiler with source.

See http://adam.wins.uva.nl/~x/grammars/vs-cobol-ii/ for a grammar, but
not one that yacc can use directly.

Siber Systems at http://www.siber.com/sct/ has a variety of Cobol tools
for sale including a parser.

Semantic Designs provides commercial tools for parsing, analyzing,
transforming, and prettyprinting COBOL85 and other dialects.
(http://www.semdesigns.com/Products/DMS/DMSToolkit.html)

At http://www.netsis.it/~asantini/cobcy/ you can find a partial Cobol to
C translator with a parser that handles about half of Cobol syntax.  Half
is a lot better than none, particularly for free.

Ken Foskey [email protected] has a Cobol parser project at
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~waratah/

Also see the Cobol FAQ posted monthly to comp.lang.misc and comp.lang.cobol.

* Where can I get a Basic grammar in yacc?

Take a look at ftp://ftp.uu.net:/usenet/comp.sources.unix/volume2/basic/
which contains a Basic interpreter with yacc parser.

* Where can I get a QBasic compiler?

Probably nowhere.  The "official" QBasic compilers were QuickBasic 4.5
and the Microsoft Professional Development System, sometims called "QBX".
You might still find copies at the big mail-order houses, but Microsoft
has discontinued them.

A shareware compiler ASIC is available from simtel mirrors such as
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/basic/asic500.zip, which
handles a large subset of Qbasic.  Also see
http://www.users.uswest.net/~sdiggins/basm.html for another freeware
Basic compiler.

PowerBasic and FirstBasic, commercial and shareware, respectively, from
http://www.powerbasic.com resembles an extended QBasic.

There's a Qbasic mailing list; send "info qbasic" to
[email protected] for details.

* Where can I get a PL/I or PL/M grammar?

There's a PL/M in the archives at ftp://ftp.iecc.com/pub/file/plm.shar.gz
Also see message 94-03-062 for a report on a PL/M to C translator.

* What other sources of grammars are available?

The download area of the JavaCC (Java Compiler Compiler) site at
https://javacc.dev.java.net/ BSD license) has a folder containing a
number of grammars.

* Where can I get free versions of yacc and lex ?

Vern Paxton's flex is a superior reimplementation of lex.  It is available
from the same places as Gnu sources, but is not subject to the Gnu
copyleft.  A version patched for Unicode characters is available at
ftp://ftp.lauton.com/pub/flex-2.5.4-unicode-patch.tar.gz.

Berkeley Yacc is a quite compatible PD version of yacc by Bob Corbett,
available on ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/4bsd/byacc.tar.Z. Gnu Bison
is derived from an earlier version of Corbett's work and is also
fairly compatible with yacc.  See
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/bison.  A byacc extension that
displays graphically the progress of a parse can be found in Jim
Roskind's C++ grammar in the FTP compilers archive.

* Are there versions of yacc and lex for MS-DOS?

There are several of them.  Commercial versions are MKS lex&yacc from MKS
in Waterloo Ont., +1 519 884 2251, http://www.mks.com or [email protected],
and PCYACC from Abraxas Software in Portland OR, +1 503 244 5253.  Both
include both yacc and lex along with a lot of sample code.

The standard flex source compiles under the usual DOS compilers, although
you may want to make some of the buffers smaller.  A DOS version of Bison
is on wuarchive.wustl.edu [128.252.135.4] and other servers under
SimTel/msdos/pgmutil/bison111.zip. See message 92-07-012 for more info.
Berkeley yacc is quite portable to any 32 bit system, but won't work on
16 bit systems without a lot of work.

* Are there C++ or Pascal versions of yacc and lex?

flexx++ and bison++ can be found at:

ftp://ftp.th-darmstadt.de/pub/programming/languages/C++/tools/flex++bison++/

A version of lex and yacc for Turbo Pascal, with source, is
available at
http://www.musikwissenschaft.uni-mainz.de/~ag/tply/tply.html

* What other compilers and tools are freely available?

There is a FAQ groups listing compiler tools freely available in
source form, maintained by Steve Robenalt. It's available on the web
at http://www.idiom.com/free-compilers, and you can retrieve a text
version (possibly out of date) from
ftp://ftp.idiom.com/pub/compilers-list/free-compilers.  The list is
not updated very often; if you think it should be updated more
frequently, feel free to drop them a note and offer to help with the
work.

Also visit the web page http://www.first.gmd.de/cogent/catalog/ which includes
pointers to a variety of compiler tools and resources.

* How can I get started with yacc and lex and compiler writing in general?

There are short on-line tutorials for lex and yacc at
http://epaperpress.com/lexandyacc/index.html

Or read any of the many books on the topic.  Here are a few of them.
Also see message 93-01-155 which reviews many compiler textbooks.

Books available online:

Pat Terry's "Compilers and Compiler Generators", originally published
as a book, is on the web as http://www.scifac.ru.ac.za/compilers/

"Parsing Techniques - A Practical Guide" by Dick Grune and Ceriel
J.H. Jacobs, published as a book in 1990, is now on the web as
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/PTAPG.html.

Books available on paper, roughly in order of publication from oldest
to newest:

Wulf et al. book, The Design of an Optimizing Compiler, American
Elsevier Publishing Co., Inc.), 1975.  A small classic about the
Bliss-11 compiler, a highly optimizing compiler for a PDP-11.  The
original version is long out of print, but it's still available via
print-on-demand from University Microfilms.

"Writing Interactive Compilers and Interpreters" bu P.J. Brown, 1979, John
Wiley & Sons Ltd ISBN 0 471 27609 X hbk ISBN 0471 100722 pbk

Martin Rodgers <[email protected]> writes: Brown explains
why we might wish to use an interactive compiler, and what we might mean
when we make distinctions like "compiled" and "interpreted". He uses Basic
as the example language for his book, plus a little pseudo code where
necessary. Modern Basic may be very different to what he used, but it's
easy to see how techniques that apply a line oriented language might be
extended to a larger unit of compilation. Brown discusses issues that are
specific to interactive language systems, which may be neglected in
compiler books that focus more on a batch approach and optimised
code. Still, he has a few things to say about the use of bytecodes and
native code, plus what might today be called "Just In Time" compiling. An
excellent introduction to compilers, with a few ideas for advanced
compilers, too.  (Out of print.)

W.M. Waite and G. Goos, "Compiler Construction," Springer-Verlag, New
York, 1984.

Dick Grune <[email protected]> writes: A theoretical approach to compiler
construction. Refreshing in that it gives a completely new view of many
subjects. Heavy reading, high information density.

"Programming a Personal Computer" by Per Brinch Hansen
Prentice-Hall 1982 ISBN 0-13-730283-5

Joe Snyder <[email protected]> writes:  This unfortunately-titled book
explains the design and creation of a single-user programming environment
for micros, using a Pascal-like language called Edison.  The author presents
all source code and explanations for the step-by-step implementation of an
Edison compiler and simple supporting operating system, all written in
Edison itself (except for a small supporting kernel written in a symbolic
assembler for PDP 11/23; the complete source can also be ordered for the IBM
PC).

The most interesting things about this book are:  1) its ability to
demonstrate how to create a complete, self-contained, self-maintaining,
useful compiler and operating system, and 2) the interesting discussion of
language design and specification problems and trade-offs in Chapter 2.

"Brinch Hansen on Pascal Compilers" by Per Brinch Hansen
Prentice-Hall 1985 ISBN 0-13-083098-4

Joe Snyder <[email protected]> writes:  Another light-on-theory
heavy-on-pragmatics here's-how-to-code-it book.  The author presents the
design, implementation, and complete source code for a compiler and p-code
interpreter for Pascal- (Pascal "minus"), a Pascal subset with boolean and
integer types (but no characters, reals, subranged or enumerated types),
constant and variable definitions and array and record types (but no packed,
variant, set, pointer, nameless, renamed, or file types), expressions,
assignment statements, nested procedure definitions with value and variable
parameters, if statements, while statements, and begin-end blocks (but no
function definitions, procedural parameters, goto statements and labels,
case statements, repeat statements, for statements, and with statements).

The compiler and interpreter are written in Pascal* (Pascal "star"), a
Pascal subset extended with some Edison-style features for creating
software development systems.  A Pascal* compiler for the IBM PC is sold by
the author, but it's easy to port the book's Pascal- compiler to any
convenient Pascal platform.

This book makes the design and implementation of a compiler look easy.  I
particularly like the way the author is concerned with quality,
reliability, and testing.  The compiler and interpreter can easily be used
as the basis for a more involved language or compiler project, especially
if you're pressed to quickly get something up and running.


"A Model Implementation of Standard Pascal" by Jim Welsh & Atholl Hay
Prentice-Hall 1986 ISBN 0-13-586454-2

Joe Snyder <[email protected]> writes: This book is only really useful
if you need to implement a COMPLETE version of a platform-independent
Pascal, but I find it interesting because the 483 pages consist entirely
of the source code listing for the compiler and p-code interpreter (both
written in Pascal itself), including copious {comments} to explain the
code.  The code eagerly delves into the horrible minutiae necessary when
implementing a complete language, and proves that no language designer
should be allowed to present his design until AFTER being forced to write
a complete compiler for the language.

J.P. Tremblay and P.G. Sorenson, "The Theory and Practice of Compiler
Writing," McGraw-Hill, 1985.

Dick Grune <[email protected]> writes: Extensive and detailed. Heavy reading.
To be consulted when other sources fail.

James E. Hendrix, "The Small-C Compiler", 2nd ed., M&T Books, ISBN
0-934375-88-7 <Book Alone>, 1-55851-007-9 <MS-DOS Disk>, 0-934375-97-6
<Book and Disk>.

William Jhun <[email protected]> writes: It explaines the C-language is
thorough....and explains every single aspect of the compiler. The book
compares source code to p-code to assembly. It goes over a nice set of
optimization routines, explains the parser, the back end, and even
includes source code, which the compiler on the disk can actually compile
itself. It's an extremely interesting book, check it out. (Out of print,
but see http://www.ddj.com/cdrom/ where you can buy a CD-ROM that has the
full text of the book and a lot of other stuff.)

Axel T. Schreiner and H. George Friedman, Jr., "Introduction to Compiler
Construction with UNIX," Prentice-Hall, 1985.

Oriented to tutorial work.  Good for beginners.  Develops a small
subset-of-C compiler through the book.  (Recommended by Eric Hughes
<[email protected]>.)  Richard Hash <[email protected]> comments
that the book has many typographical errors, and readers should be
suspicious of the examples until they actually try them.  Sources are
available for FTP as ftp://a.cs.uiuc.edu/pub/faculty/friedman/tar

Aho, Sethi, and Ullman, "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools,"
Addison Wesley, 1986, ISBN 0-201-10088-6, the "dragon book".

Describes clearly and completely lexing and parsing techniques including
the ones in yacc and lex.  The authors work or have worked at Bell Labs
with Steve Johnson and Mike Lesk, the authors of Yacc and Lex.  It's
still the classic text, although it's getting kind of old.  New version
is apparently in the works but is nowhere near ready yet.

Charles N. Fischer & Richard J. LeBlanc, "Crafting A Compiler", Benjamin
Cummings Publishing, Menlo Park, CA, 1988, ISBN 0-8053-3201-4.  There's
also a revised version as of 1990 or 1991 titled "Crafting A Compiler in
C", with all examples in C (the original used ADA/CS).  The tools are at
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~fischer/ftp/tools/

Erich Nahum <[email protected]> writes: A key compiler reference.  We
used the original to great effect in Eliot Moss' graduate compiler
construction class here at UMass.  My feeling is that Fischer & LeBlanc is
a good tutorial, and one should use Aho, Sethi, & Ullman as a reference.

Peter Calingaert, "Program Translation Fundamentals", Computer Science
Press, c1988, ISBN: 0-88175-096-4, pp 366. Quinn Tyler Jackson
<[email protected]> writes: Covers assemblers, program modules, macro
processing, interpretation and generation, source-program analysis, data
structures, compilation, linking and loading.  The reader is assumed to
have some experience "both in an assembler language and in a
machine-independent procedural language."  It's a good overview of the many
aspects of program translation and compilation, this book would make a good
second look into compilation before diving into hard theory, but after
having gleaned some basics from a more introductory work such.

Des Watson, "High-Level Languages and Their Compilers," International
Computer Science Series, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Wokingham
England, 1989.

Adrian Howard <[email protected]> writes: This is the kindest,
most readable introduction to compilers at the graduate level I have ever
read - an excellent example of what textbooks should all be like.

Alan Holub, "Compiler Design in C," Prentice-Hall, 1990, ISBN
0-13-155045-4.

A large book containing the complete source code to a reimplementation of
yacc and lex and a C compiler.  Quite well written, too, though it has a
lot of errors.  The fourth printing is supposed to correct most of them.
An errata list is in message 90-06-081, and a newer one in PDF (yuck) on
his web site at <http://www.holub.com>.

John R. Levine (that's me), Tony Mason, and Doug Brown, ``Lex & Yacc,''
2nd Edition, O'Reilly and Associates, 1992, ISBN 1-56592-000-7, $29.95.

A concise introduction with completely worked out examples and an extensive
reference section.  The new edition is completely revised from the earlier
1990 edition.  Source code can be FTP'ed from ftp.ora.com.  Get the second
printing (see the copyright page) which fixes a bunch of typos.

Donnely and Stallman, "The Bison Manual," part of the on-line distrubution
of the FSF's Bison, a reimplementation of yacc.  As with everything else
from the FSF, full source code is included.

Bennett, J.P. "Introduction to Compiling Techniques - A First Course Using
Ansi C, Lex and Yacc," McGraw Hill Book Co, 1990, ISBN 0-07-707215-4.

It's intended for a first course in modern compiler techniques, is very
clearly written, and has a full chapter on YACC.  I found it to be a good
introductory text before getting into the 'Dragon book'.  (Recommended by
John Merlin <[email protected]>.)  Source code is available
at www.jeremybennett.com.

Ronald Mak, "Writing Compilers and Interpreters: An Applied Approach",
1991, John Wiley and Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-50968-X.

Andrew Tucker <[email protected]> writes: This 512-page book presents
a strictly hands on approach, developing a Pascal interpreter and
interactive debugger, then completing with a compiler which emits 8086
assembly.  All source code is provided in print and on disk.  This book is
very low to non-existent in theoretical content, but is very practical and
readable for an introduction.  Taylor Hutt <[email protected]>
comments that the book is a piece of junk.  The code that is contained in
the book is full of bugs, and the code that it generates will not work.

"The Art of Compiler Design", Thomas Pittman & James Peters, Prentice-Hall
International, 1992, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632, 0-13-046160-1

Franklin L. Vermeulen <[email protected]> writes: This is a very
nicely written and straightforward text on compiler construction.  There
is a certain (unavoidable?) amount of overlap with a course on automata
(as in Aho, Sethi and Ullman).  It is based on Modula-2 and on an
experimental tool, the TAG compiler-compiler (Transformational Attribute
Grammar) which seems to be a C-independent superset of lex/yacc, because
its syntax allows you to specify all semantic actions without a single
line of C-code (or any other implementation language, for that matter).

A. Pyster, "Compiler Design and Constuction (Tools and Techniques)",
Second Ed., Van Nostrand Reinhold, c1980, 0-442-27536-6.

Gabriela O. de Vivo <[email protected]> writes: The book covers the
general principles of compiler design and presents a good number of
examples focusing on the building of pieceparts of compilers for C and
Pascal.  The implementation (construction) language is C.  Note that this
edition (in contrast with the previous one) is very related to the Unix
world, including the use of tools like Lex, Yacc, and standard utilities.
(Out of print.)

Thomas W. Parsons, "Introduction to compiler construction",
Computer Science Press, c1992, ISBN: 0-716782618.

Quinn Tyler Jackson <[email protected]> writes: Provides a broad overview
of the topics of finite state automaton theory (deterministic and
non-deterministic), lexical analysis, parsing models, and target generation
and optimization strategies.  Includes appendices on lex and yacc.  Most
examples in Pascal.  (Recommended reading for the faint at heart.)

Alberto Apostolico & Zvi Galil, "Pattern Matching Algorithms", Oxford
University Press, 1997, ISBN: 0-19-511367-5.  Quinn Tyler Jackson
<[email protected]> writes: This book "attempts a snapshot of the
current state of the art in Pattern Matching" research, and in this
reader's opinion, it achieves its stated goal.  From algorithms to
find the shortest common superstrings, to 2D matrix searches, almost
no pattern matching problem encountered by today's stringologist is
left unaddressed.  The preface declares the book's intention to
combine a graduate or advanced level course textbook with a
source for the specialist as well as the neophyte -- but I would
advise the "neophyte" to have an adequate background in notation and
formalisms, since the many authors are academics, and no algorithm
presented goes without formal quantification.  The bibliographies at
the end of each chapter are a priceless resource.

Reinhard Wilhelm and Dieter Maurer, Compiler Design, Addison-Wesley,
c1995.  This extremely dense book is a treasure trove of compiler
info that is hard to find anywhere else, including explanations of
techniques to compile functional languages and OO languages including
multiple inheritance, attribute evaluation, abstract interpretation,
and code generation by tree matching.

Steven S. Muchnick, Advanced Compiler Design & Implementation,Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers, (1997), pp. 856, ISBN: 1-55860-320-4. Quinn Tyler
Jackson <[email protected]> writes: Except perhaps for the brief
overview of compiler architecture at the beginning, this book is for
the seasoned compiler writer rather than the novice or student wanting
an overview of compiler construction.  Muchnick's focus is on code
generation, optimization, and, as the title suggests, advanced issues.
My opinion is that this clear, thorough treatment is for the seasoned
compiler engineer who already has one or two compiler or interpreter
implementations on the curriculum vitae and who is looking for new
ways to address some of the deeper issues of the field.  There is no
hand holding going on with a book like this.

Andrew W. Appel, Modern Compiler Implementation in C Cambridge
University Press (1998), pp. 544, ISBN: 0-521-58390-X Quinn Tyler
Jackson <[email protected]> writes: This book shines with the
experience of those that came before it.  It covers all of the phases
of compilation in a clear, readable fashion.  Many of the topics it
brings to light were once the domain of the illuminati of compiler
construction.  A conscientious reader, with some of the other
literature (such as Levine et al.'s Lex & Yacc) under his belt, an
Internet connection to hunt down the errata and source to the samples
in the book, a good C compiler, and a determination to absorb the
details, could probably learn to write a compiler from the ground up
and come out of the experience without too many major holes in
knowledge.

If anyone sends in others, I'll be happy to add them to the list.

* Where can I FTP the sources to the programs in Holub's "Compiler
Design in C" or Mak's "Writing Compilers and Interpreters" ?

The programs in Mak's second edition are at
ftp://ftp.wiley.com/public/computer_books/Software_Development/Mak-Writing_Compilers/
in an odd MS-DOS only format.  Holub's code is shareware, available on his
web site at <http://www.holub.com>.

* Where can I learn about garbage collection ?

Garbage collection (more properly, automatic storage management) has its own
mailing list and FAQ.  Find more info at:

http://iecc.com/gclist/

To join the list, send "subscribe gclist" to [email protected].

* Where can I find specs for Intel object files?

Specs for Windows OMF and PE, and Unix ELF and DWARF are available
at http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?s=EXE.  (Also search for ELF,
DWARF, COFF, etc.)

A more recent definition of PE is on Microsoft's web site at
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/hardware/PECOFF.mspx (Clickwrap
license required in which you agree not to sue them nor to use the
spec to develop nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons.)

All of the DWARF specs including the current DWARF 3 are on
http://dwarf.freestandards.org/

Regards,
John Levine, comp.compilers moderator
--
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