Programming a Compiler in C/C++...

[Mario87]

Does anyone know of any good books and/or e-books for programming a compiler in C/C++?

Cheers!

[/dev/null]

Hi,
For what language are you trying to program a compiler for?
Are you planning on writing your own lexial analyser etc, or are you planning on using third party tools such as lex/yacc?
Are you looking for information on how to program a compiler in general (ie, the "workings" behind a compiler) or just how to implement an idea you already have but in c/c++?
You may find this book useful for the former case... Right-Click-->Save as

[nitelife]

These all have high reviews on amazon:

Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools (Paperback)
by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, Jeffrey D. Ullman has high reviews on amazon

Modern Compiler Design (World Wide Series in Computer Science) (Paperback)
by D. Grune, H. Bal, C. Jacobs, K. Langendoen

Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation (Hardcover)
by Steven S. Muchnick

Modern Compiler Implementation in C (Paperback)
by Andrew W. Appel, Maia Ginsburg

This has no reviews but looks good:
Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler (Paperback)
by Edward G. Nilges

Search for "compiler"...

Are you just taking an interest? or are you planning on taking over the world?

[/dev/null]

In addition, my university lecturer who teaches the compilers course recommends the following:

Aho, A. V. Sethi, R. and Ullman, J. D., compilers, Principles, techniques and Tools (ISBN 0-201-101-947), Addison Wesley 1985

Keith Cooper, Linda Torczon, "Engineering a Compiler", Morgan Kaufmann, 2003.

Further Reading

Hunter, R., The Essence of Compilers, Prentice Hall, 1999

Wilhelm, R. and Maurer, D., Compiler Design, Addison Wesley 1995

Grune, Bal, Jacobs, Langendoen, Modern Compiler Design, Wiley, 2001

[Mario87]

Hey guys! Cheers for all the replies! This is for my uni assignment! In the next seven weeks my lecturer wants me to program a compiler in C or C++!

Basically I need a book that explains the ideas behind a compiler, and how to implement those ideas into an actual working compiler!

My lecturer has been a bit vaugue as to what he actually wants, because his definition of a compiler is a "program that converts from one language to another" (like from C/C++ to machine code), he said that he would even class a web browser as a compiler, because it converts HTML into text and pictures!

Any help much appreciated!

[/dev/null]

hmmm... sounds a bit of a strange assignment to me...! He's not given you any language to "compile" (or interperet), not told you how he wants you to do it, what he is expecting, whether you are allowed to use code generation tools like lex/yacc....

I'd personally ask him for some more details and a better spec if I were you!

[Mario87]

Will do m8! Will get back to you as soon as I find out exactly what needs to be done!

[Mario87]

Right, just had a look online, and these are the slides that tells us about the assignment!

Assessment

•Write a compiler in C or C++ that reads C source code and compiles main to Three Address Code (TAC) implemented in C.

• Deadline - Monday of week 10. That is, 12 December, 2006.

• Submit a hard copy of a word processed report to the Student Information Office by the deadline.

• The report should explain the design of your compiler, give the input and output of example runs, and contain the full source code of the compiler.

Note
There are two different ways to write a compiler.

• Specify the language in a right-recursive grammar and translate this by hand to recursive subroutines that implement the lexical analyser, parser, and code generator.

• Specify the language in a left-recursive grammar and use a compiler generator to generate the lexical analyser and parser from the grammar. The grammar will be augmented with hand-written code that is used to generate a code generator.

• There is an algorithm for converting left-recursive grammars to right-recursive ones and vice versa.

[/dev/null]

Hi,
Have you drawn up your grammar yet? I'd personally go for the second option and use lex/yacc to implement it (design your grammar by hand first), however if you haven't used them before you may want to do an alternate option.
It seems a bit "harsh" asking you to create a compiler for c though, lol! - Rather you than me!!!
Perhaps they are not asking for you to create it that will parse the entire semantics of c, maybe just a smaller set?

Either way, you will first need to design your grammar (you may be able to "borrow" it from the www or the www however I never said that! ). What approach you take to this will determine how you undertake the next part (according to the "notes" above).

[OrangeJuicey]

I don't think he wants you to implement a programming language compiler becuase thats what i'm doing for my uni project and there are 6 of us doing it together. The first thing is you'll need your base language which for you is C/C++ i'm using Haskell(50x more powerful than C hence so can my language be 50x more powerful than C). Then you'll need some assembler language. I'm using Pentium Assembler on my project.

The basic layout is
Text --> Read Source Prog --Parse--> Tree --Traversal--> Result

The traversal is done in C/C++ and reads from the data tree

Ok so i'm not got very far so far, i'm made a language Zero which can have ints Add and Multiply

data Term = Con Int | Add Term Term | Mul Term Term

This ^^ is then defined in the Traversal (e.g eval ::Term --> Int)

this can then be made into a tree. e.g
13+4*(2+3)
2::Term
2 is Con2
2+3 Add(con2)(con3)

Add(con3)(Mul (Con4)(Add(con2)(con3)) <-- this is the tree but its hard to represent.

hope some of this helps you, its pretty hard to write down lol take ez.