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

Using Unicon’s declarations and data types

You can’t write a Unicon program without declaring things. Declaring something is the act of associating a name, visible within some scope and lifetime, with some chunk of code or memory capable of holding a value. Next, let’s learn how different program components can be declared.

Declaring program components

Unicon programs consist of one or more procedures beginning with main(). Program structure may also include classes. Unicon distinguishes user-defined procedures from functions that are built into the language. The following patterns show the syntax structure for the primary declarations of bodies of code in Unicon’s procedures and methods:

  • Declare procedure or method:
    procedure X ( params ) [locals]* [initial] [exprs]* end
    method X ( params ) [locals]* [initial] [exprs]* end
    

    All procedures and methods have a name, zero or more parameters, and a body ending with the word end...