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

Exploring references for further reading

Here is a detailed bibliography of the works discussed in the previous sections. Within each subsection, the works are listed alphabetically by author.

Studying programming language design

In the area of programming language design, you may find the following items to be of interest:

  • Harold Abelson and Gerald Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Second edition, MIT Press, 1996.
  • Rafael Finkel, Advanced Programming Language Design, Pearson 1995.
  • Ralph Griswold, History of the Icon Programming Language, Proceedings of HOPL-II, ACM SIGPLAN Notices 28:3 March 1993, pages 53–68.
  • Daniel H.H. Ingalls, Design Principles Behind Smalltalk, Byte Magazine August 1981, pages 286–298.
  • John Ousterhout, Scripting: Higher-Level Programming for the 21st Century, IEEE Computer 31:3, March 1998, pages 23–30.
  • John Ousterhout, Why Threads Are a Bad Idea (for most purposes...