Compiler Construction in Ada

[agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state]

I'm looking at teaching Construction in the Spring semester.  The course
includes writing a compiler (all the way through code generation for a
SPARC machine) for a language I specify.  In the past, we have had a
Pascal compiler, and the class has used Pascal to write their projects.

Now the Pascal compiler is gone.  And I'm looking for the appropriate
language in which to write the compiler for the project.  The language and
the project require the student to write a top-down, recursive descent
parsing compiler.  Therefore, a language allowing nested subprogram
definition would be very preferrable.

We have what looks like a good Ada compiler (from Meridian) for the Sun
workstations.  So I'd like to use Ada to write the compiler.  

My question(s): is there any pitfalls to look out for here?  has any one
done this?  what special disadvantages are there here?

Thanks in advance.

      Mike Jipping
      Hope College Department of Computer Science
      jipping@cs.hope.edu  (BITNET: JIPPING@HOPE)
[I'd use whatever language had the best debugging support.  I've written
recursive descent code in C and (a while ago) in Fortran without any
trouble. -John]
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