Advice for writing my own compiler? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by swordsmanluke@programming.dev to c/programming_languages@programming.dev

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I want to make my programming language! ...for fun.

I've been reading LLVM's own tutorial, which is really good. I'm curious though, for those of you who have written your own languages before... What do you wish you had known before you set out?

In terms of previous experience, I have written a really basic lexer and parser for a non-executable markup language I designed. Now I'm curious about the next level. I have some ideas for a language design I'd like to try out. The language features themselves are nothing new - I'm sure some other language out there has done these things and done it better. That's fine! I just want to better understand how all this stuff hangs together.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] philm@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I just default to recursive descent parsers (with pratt parsing), simple, efficient, great error messages and almighty (CFGs). For quick prototyping I really like to use https://github.com/zesterer/chumsky currently (pratt parsing was just added, need to try that out again).

But writing a parser generator is certainly an interesting academic task.

[-] TheTrueLinuxDev@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago

Very nice, I was basically forking off Python Lark and rewriting it in C language, with some adjustments to Earley Parser in an experiment to parallelize the processing in Vulkan Compute.

this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023

24 points (96.2% liked)

Programming Languages

1160 readers

2 users here now

Hello!

This is the current Lemmy equivalent of https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/.

The content and rules are the same here as they are over there. Taken directly from the /r/ProgrammingLanguages overview:

This community is dedicated to the theory, design and implementation of programming languages.

Be nice to each other. Flame wars and rants are not welcomed. Please also put some effort into your post.

This isn't the right place to ask questions such as "What language should I use for X", "what language should I learn", and "what's your favorite language". Such questions should be posted in /c/learn_programming or /c/programming.

This is the right place for posts like the following:

"Check out this new language I've been working on!"
"Here's a blog post on how I implemented static type checking into this compiler"
"I want to write a compiler, where do I start?"
"How does the Java compiler work? How does it handle forward declarations/imports/targeting multiple platforms/?"
"How should I test my compiler? How are other compilers and interpreters like gcc, Java, and python tested?"
"What are the pros/cons of ?"
"Compare and contrast vs. "
"Confused about the semantics of this language"
"Proceedings from PLDI / OOPSLA / ICFP / "

See /r/ProgrammingLanguages for specific examples

Related online communities

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

armchair_progamer@programming.dev