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

Rendering regions in Unicon

This section describes a control structure called rendering regions, which was added to Unicon while writing this book. Since this feature is new, we will look at it in some detail. The rendering region control structure has been on Unicon’s to-do list for a long time but adding a control structure can be a bit difficult, especially if the semantics are non-trivial, so it took writing this chapter to get around to it. First, though, we need to set the scene.

Rendering 3D graphics from a display list

Unicon’s 3D graphics facilities specify what is to be drawn via a series of calls to a set of built-in functions, and an underlying runtime system renders code written in C and OpenGL that draws the scene as many times per second as possible. The Unicon functions and C render code communicate using a display list. Mainly, the Unicon functions place primitives on the end of the display list, and the rendering code traverses the display list...