Writing a compiler in Ruby, bottom up

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Back in March 2008 I started publishing a series on how to write a compiler in Ruby, bottom up, that is, starting with the code generator and working my way up instead of the more traditional approach of writing the parser first. Here are the parts I've published on my blog so far:

• Step 1 - Creating a simple prolog / epilog for the main function
• Step 2 - Function calls / Hello World
• Step 3 - Chaining expressions ; Adding sub-expressions
• Step 4 - Defining functions ; Adding support for a runtime
• Step 5 - Number literals ; if .. then .. else
• Step 6 - Anonymous functions: lamba / call
• Step 7 - Making use of lambda / call ; Function arguments
• Step 8 - Assignment, arithmetic and comparisons
• Step 9 - A builtin "while"
• Step 10 - Testing the compiler: A primitive "parser"
• Step 11 - A separate emitter class to output assembler
• Step 12 - Adding support for arrays
• Interlude - A simple operator precedence parser
• Step 13 - Local variables
• Step 14 - Variable length arguments
• Step 15 - Starting on the real parser
• Step 16 - Extending the parser
• Step 17 - Inferring "let"'s
• Step 18 - Plugging in an operator precedence parser
• Interlude - The Ruby Object Model - useful overview as the next steps is to start fleshing out an object model
• Step 19 - The Object Model
• Interlude - The problem with compiling Ruby - Overview of some of the problems with compiling Ruby
• Step 20 - Taking stock of where we are; detail walkthrough of the shunting yard parse component
• Step 21 - Basic support for the Symbol class; starting to work on attr_reader/attr_writer/attr_accessor
• Step 22 - A diversion into method_missing
• Step 23 - Real Strings: Turning strings into objects
• Interlude - How to implement closures
• Step 24 - The Outer Scope (coming soon): Cleaning up and adding the "main" object

The next two parts are mostly finished. From part 24 I'll be back to relatively "clean" changesets per part again.

All the code can now be found in this GitHub repository

Someone commenting on this series pointed to Niklaus Wirth's excellent book on compiler construction (PDF available on his homepage) as a good starting point from a traditional, top down point of view. It's a good and very approachable book, and well worth a read.

Another great series with a more traditional approach is a famous series by Jack Crenshaw: Let's build a compiler.

This list at Stackoverflow.com has a great list of other compiler writing resources.

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• ajlopez 2 weeks ago

  From twitter via BackType

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