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Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

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Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#41

Post by shortrounddev2 »

kragen wrote: post #24
badsectoracula wrote: post #15

Weird that this is about building a C compiler[0] in OCaml . I expected the implementation language to also be C both for consistency but also because i'm willing to bet that there are more people who can read C than OCaml. [0] actually from the readme in the github repo[1] it seems to be a C subset, not all of C [1] https://github.com/nlsandler/nqcc2

ocaml makes writing a compiler enormously more accessible, and learning to read ocaml, while it can be somewhat intimidating at first, is much easier than learning to write a compiler (imagine a medieval accountant trying to learn to do long division in roman numerals. he'll be much better off learning the western arabic numerals fibonacci is so excited about)

I really really really want to get more into Ocaml but as far as I know there is no good support for a debugger to use in an IDE like VSCode or even vim. Everyone I talk to says they just do print debugging. It's easier to 'reason about your code' in FP, but I do NOT want to go back to a time where I coded without breakpoints. I use F# because of its first party tooling support

Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#42

Post by rednab »

i_don_t_know wrote: post #7

Somewhat unrelated: Is there a book that walks you through building a database system from storage to queries, optimizer, execution, indexing, transactions, etc?

Database Design and Implementation, ISBN 3030338355 ¹). Java source code for the SimpleDB system from the book available from the author's website ²).

¹) https://www.amazon.com/dp/3030338355/

²) http://www.cs.bc.edu/~sciore/simpledb/

Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#43

Post by mjburgess »

kragen wrote: post #27
mjburgess wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parser-generators were always academic projects that had little relevance to making real-world programming languages -- where parsing is very easy to write, and necessarily benefits from doing it (ie., you can get better error handling/etc.). Today most languages are front-ends for LLVM IR, but LLVM is very slow and takes a long time to optimize. Many new languages target x86/arm directly with their own weakly optimi…

yacc/bison was used for lex, bc, pcc, gcc, original awk, the bsd pascal compiler, eqn, m4 (!), and many other languages. it's still used for pcc, oawk, mawk, pari/gp, and units. that's just what i have sitting around in my downloads directory and, while we're talking about ocaml, ocaml does use ocamllex and ocamlyacc for its own parser so, while you can certainly do without parser generators, they have very commonly…

I guess I wasn't very clear. I didnt mean to say, as a historical matter, were irrelevant.

I meant to say the idea of a parser generator is a solution to a problem that that real world langs don't really have. When writing a programming language, your issue isnt how much time the parser is going to take to write, or how complex it's going to be. The parser is a relatively trivial part of the problem.

Due to language designers often being taught to develop langauges in this fashion, many have relied on these tools. But the modern view of compliers as "programming langauge UIs" and the focus on DX, i'd argue its actively pathological to use a parser generator.

Much academic work has, til recently, focused on these areas -- whereas today, the bulk of the difficulty is in understanding SSA/LLVM/ARM/Basic Optimizatiosn/etc. details which are "boring, circumstantial" etc. and not really research projects. I was just pointing this out since a lot of people, myself included, go down the EBNF parser-generator rabbit hole and think inventing a langauge is some formal exercise -- when the reality is the opposite: it's standard programming-engineering work.

Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#44

Post by synack »

I’ve been working through this book implementing the compiler in Ada. So far, I’m really enjoying it. The book doesn’t make too many assumptions about implementation details, leaving you free to experiment and fill in the blanks yourself.

It feels like a more advanced version of Crafting Interpreters.

I haven’t looked at the OCaml implementation at all. The text and unit tests are all you need.

Discussion on the Ada Forum: https://forum.ada-lang.io/t/writing-a-c-compiler/1024

Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#45

Post by shortrounddev2 »

hasbot wrote: post #14

So what's different about writing a compiler in 2024 than say 10, 20, or 30 years ago? When I started writing compilers in the 80's and 90's lex/flex and yacc/bison were popular. ANTLR came out but I never had a chance to use it. Everything after lexing and parsing was always hand rolled.

ANTLR generate a visitor system from a BNF grammar that you need to implement the logic of in your chosen language, which I believe is similar to C++'s std::visit. lex and yacc generate state machines using BNF grammar and you implement the logic in the tools themselves

Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#46

Post by stefanos82 »

mjburgess wrote: post #40
sestep wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give some specific examples of those new languages with their own backends for faster builds?

I was immediately thinking of Jai, Zig, .. but I've seen a few

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think both Zig and Jai use LLVM as their default backend...at least, that's what I have seen via live streaming for Jai, and from Zig's repo.

Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#47

Post by jcpst »

spinningslate wrote: post #21
Coolbeanstoo wrote: post #5

This looks cool, been interested in learning more about compilers since I did the basics in college. Lots of things seem to focus on making interpreters and never make it to the code generation part so its nice to see that this features information about that.

With no disrespect to the book that's the subject of this thread as I haven't read it, but Bob Nystrom's Crafting Interpreter [0] is a fantastic book. It covers all phases in compilation, including both an interpreter and a VM. It's been covered on several threads here over the years [1]. [0]: https://craftinginterpreters.com/ [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=crafting+interpreters

I remember seeing this a while back. That typesetting is beautiful. Thank you for bringing it up here, I might have to pick that one up.

I’ve been bored with building line-of-business applications, despite designing for complex requirements in high-volume distributed systems.

In fact I took a break from CS learning entirely 9 months ago. Even reading HN. I’ve been studying electronics and analog signal processing instead.

But now that I’ve built about 50 guitar pedals of increasing complexity, I feel ready to switch back to CS studies again.

Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#48

Post by fuhsnn »

chibicc[0] complement this book nicely, in addition to a basic compiler, it guides you through writing the preprocessor and driver, which, although not addressed much in literature, are the missing link between the compiler built from the book and real C projects.

[0] https://github.com/rui314/chibicc

Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#49

Post by synack »

alok-g wrote: post #22

I would love to see a book that talks about going all the way to generate machine code, i.e., not stopping at generation of assembly. Alternatively, I would like to learn about not just how to make a compiler, but also simultaneously a debugger, hot-reloading, etc.

The debugger book is coming soon. https://nostarch.com/building-a-debugger

Re: Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch

#50

Post by sunday_serif »

I’m working through this book now and really enjoying it!

Each chapter of the book includes a test suite to run against the code you’ve written.

In some ways, the tests in this book feel very similar to the labs in the book Computer Systems: A programmers perspective — which is high praise!

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