Re: Programming Language Creation Books

["Chris Tavares" <ctavares@...>]

>
> The "Dragon Book" ISBN 0201100886 is *the* bible :-)
>

And, like most bibles, is *extremely* difficult to figure out without
a priest (i.e. college professor) interpreting it for you. I took a
compiler class recently, and we used this as a textbook. It was, for
the most part, incomprehensible (the book, not the class).

A good place to start would be "Constructing Language Processors for
Little Languages" by Randy M. Kaplan, ISBN: 0471597538. It covers the
basics of lexing and parsing very, very well, and also discusses the
issues behind language design in the process. The author unfortunately
gives little attention to the runtime aspects of language construction
(for example, there's no discussion on how to execute a loop) but the
material that is there is MUCH more approachable than the dragon book.

-Chris

P.S. If this message comes out in all sorts of weird HTML, I
apologize. I *think* I've got it set to plain text, but who knows what
Outlook will really do?