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

Questions

  1. A bytecode interpreter could use an instruction set with up to three addresses (operands) per instruction, such as three-address code. Instead, the Jzero interpreter uses zero or one operands per instruction. What are the pros and cons of using three-address code in the bytecode interpreter, just as it is used in intermediate code?
  2. On real CPUs and in many C-based bytecode interpreters, bytecode addresses are represented by literal machine addresses. However, the bytecode interpreters that were shown in this chapter implement bytecode addresses as positions or offsets within allocated blocks of memory. Is a programming language that does not have a pointer data type at a fatal disadvantage in implementing a bytecode interpreter, compared to a language that does support pointer data types?
  3. If code is represented in memory as an immutable string value, what constraints does that impose on the implementation of a bytecode interpreter?

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