The Theory and Practice of Compiler Writing

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Notation and concepts for languages and grammars. 3. Programming language design. 4. Scanners. 5. Compile-time error handling. 6. Top-down parsing. 7. Bottom up-parsing. 8. Symbol-table handling techniques. 9. Run-time storage organization and management. 10. Intermediate forms of source programs. 11. Semantic analysis and code generation. 12. Code optimization. 13. Machine-dependent optimization. 14. Compiler-compilers. Appendix. Indices.

"This book provides a practical approach to compiler implementation and shows how the different language features are handled and translated in the compilation process. Unlike most books in this area, The Theory and Practice of Compiler Writing thoroughly covers programming language design and error detection, and recovery techniques in compilation, enabling readers to get a firm grasp on compiler planning and programming.

Traditional topics such as lexical analysis, syntactic analysis, symbol table handling, semantic analysis, code generation and code optimization are given balanced coverage, so that readers learn about these pivotal compiler topics without being overwhelmed with unnecessary detail and theory.

Salient features:

• Illustrations are provided for many of the problems that are encountered in writing a compiler for a newly designed language.
• Instructors can use this book as a guide to illustrate difficulties that commonly arise when implementing a compiler.
• It can also be used as a sample document that is similar to what students should produce for their own compiler."