Book Image

Build Your Own Programming Language - Second Edition

By : Clinton L. Jeffery
Book Image

Build Your Own Programming Language - Second Edition

By: Clinton L. Jeffery

Overview of this book

There are many reasons to build a programming language: out of necessity, as a learning exercise, or just for fun. Whatever your reasons, this book gives you the tools to succeed. You’ll build the frontend of a compiler for your language and generate a lexical analyzer and parser using Lex and YACC tools. Then you’ll explore a series of syntax tree traversals before looking at code generation for a bytecode virtual machine or native code. In this edition, a new chapter has been added to assist you in comprehending the nuances and distinctions between preprocessors and transpilers. Code examples have been modernized, expanded, and rigorously tested, and all content has undergone thorough refreshing. You’ll learn to implement code generation techniques using practical examples, including the Unicon Preprocessor and transpiling Jzero code to Unicon. You'll move to domain-specific language features and learn to create them as built-in operators and functions. You’ll also cover garbage collection. Dr. Jeffery’s experiences building the Unicon language are used to add context to the concepts, and relevant examples are provided in both Unicon and Java so that you can follow along in your language of choice. By the end of this book, you'll be able to build and deploy your own domain-specific language.
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
1
Section I: Programming Language Frontends
7
Section II: Syntax Tree Traversals
13
Section III: Code Generation and Runtime Systems
22
Section IV: Appendix
23
Answers
24
Other Books You May Enjoy
25
Index

Downloading the software used in this chapter

In this chapter, we will be looking at one mainstream commercially supported IDE, plus a simpler IDE that illustrates some of the concepts presented. The first IDE is Visual Studio Code, a free IDE that you can download from http://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads. Since we are extending Visual Studio Code to know about your new language, additional tools are required. Microsoft’s instructions say to install Git (which you have probably already installed in order to access the book’s code on GitHub) and Node.js (from https://nodejs.org/en/download/current).

Node.js in turn installs many software components, including Python and some Visual Studio development tools. This requires a strong internet connection, many minutes of time, and requires quite a leap of blind faith on your part. Have fun. If the Node.js install went well, you should be able to install a tool called Yeoman with the command:

npm install -g...