From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,184737148aef02ac X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Chris Morgan Subject: Re: Building a compiler (was: Fixed point multiplication ambiguity) Date: 1999/02/03 Message-ID: <87aeyv4kbg.fsf@mihalis.ix.netcom.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 440196888 Sender: cm@mihalis.ix.netcom.com References: <78sojm$crk$1@plug.news.pipex.net> <7982p7$nll$1@plug.news.pipex.net> Organization: Linux Hackers Unlimited X-NETCOM-Date: Wed Feb 03 8:44:13 AM CST 1999 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-02-03T08:44:13-06:00 List-Id: "Nick Roberts" writes: > But ... people have the strangest passions (climbing mountains, leaping out > of aircraft, standing for presidential election), and mine happens to be > building an Ada compiler. It's a bit like sex: if nobody did it, there would > be no more people! Well, somebody's got to build Ada compilers: if nobody > did it, there would be no Ada compilers. Presumably there are some "itches" in the design of GNAT/GCC that you would like to scratch by building your own alternative. I have to wonder though whether you wouldn't get more satisfaction out of building extended versions of GNAT. There have been some discussions of language extensions on this group, including one for which Tucker Taft eventually gave the most popular new syntax. I am reminded of some code I once tried to rewrite at a Wall St firm. It was so horrible to read I thought I would replace it with clean code, but the more I coded, the more I understood the old horrible stuff, and eventually I saw the fix was 5 lines long (with one cheat) and I had more confidence in those 5 lines than a new implementation (given that there was some interaction with other bad code). [Aside : Of course that did no favours to the next poor chap to look at the code, but that's the way that firm works, anyway it was C++.] Still, if you want to try, it's a worthy challenge, let us know when your parser runs faster than GNAT's ;) I once thought about it myself but I decided my interest lay in how correct code is translated (implementation of language constructs) whereas real compilers have to do a lot of drudgery handling all those pesky user errors. Chris -- Chris Morgan