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

The difference between preprocessors and transpilers

The Unicon translator writes its output in Icon and then invokes an extended version of the Icon translator icont to generate bytecode. The use of a preprocessor and a full parser smells like things a transpiler would do, but the fact that Unicon’s output looks almost identical to its input except when classes are involved makes Unicon feel like it is still a preprocessor in some respects.

Fundamentally, a transpiler writes out source code in a different high-level language than its input. Usually, there is in fact a difference in language level, and usually, the transpiler transpiles from a higher-level language down to a slightly lower-level language. The poster children for this process are the myriad of languages that are implemented by writing out C code and using a C compiler as their code generator. C is effectively used as a portable assembly language. The considerable optimization performed by most C compilers...