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

Handling package and class scopes in Unicon

Creating symbol tables for Jzero considers two scopes: class and local. Since Jzero does not do instances, Jzero’s class scope is static and lexical. A larger, real-world language must do more work to handle scopes. Java, for example, must distinguish when a symbol declared in the class scope is a reference to a variable shared across all instances of the class, and when the symbol is a normal member variable that’s been allocated separately for each instance of the class. In the case of Jzero, an isMember Boolean can be added to the symbol table entries to distinguish member variables from class variables, similar to the isConst flag.

Unicon’s implementation is a lot different than Jzero’s. A summary of its symbol tables and class scopes allows for a fruitful comparison. Whatever it does similarly to Jzero might also be how other languages handle things. What Unicon does differently than Jzero, each language...