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

Index

A

action table 77

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) 372

alternation 36

ambiguity 73

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) 103, 395

anti-patterns 419

arity 106

array 194

operations, checking 194

types, checking during accesses 197, 198

types, checking during creation 195-197

variable declarations, handling 194, 195

array type 24

assignment 146

associative array 478

atomic data types, Unicon 475

numeric 476

textual 476

atomic types 23

atomic values 251

AT&T assembler syntax 372

B

backtracking 344

base pointer register 330

basic block boundaries 378

big inhale model 95

binary icode format 366

block region 446

built-in functions

adding, to bytecode interpreter 408

developing, for Unicon 414, 415

integrating, with control structures 410, 411

writing 408

writing, for use with native code implementation 409, 410

built-in macro...