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

Case study – designing graphics facilities in Unicon

Unicon's 2D and 3D graphics are built-in and non-trivial in size. The design of Unicon's graphics facilities is a real-world example that illustrates some of the trade-offs in programming language design. Most programming languages don't feature built-in graphics (or any built-in input/output), instead relegating all input/output to libraries. The C language certainly performs input/output via libraries, and Unicon's graphics facilities are built on top of C language APIs. When it comes to libraries, many languages emulate the lower-level language they are implemented in (such as C or Java) and attempt to provide an exact 1:1 translation of the APIs of the implementation language. When higher-level languages are implemented on top of lower-level languages, this approach provides full access to the underlying API, at the cost of lowering the language level when using those facilities.This wasn't an option...