4 ms·
I agree completely about Lex & Yacc, and this is the conclusion I came to at the end of the article. Yacc (leaving Lex out for a moment, since it's a different
by eliben 16y ago
I agree completely about Lex & Yacc, and this is the conclusion I came to at the end of the article. Yacc (leaving Lex out for a moment, since it's a different story) is being taught for its interesting educational value, but once in the wild, you just find that most real-world compilers don't use it.
Regarding historical perspective, unfortunately it isn't so easy to gain. I actually consulted a lot of comp.compiler discussions from the early 1990s, but most links in them point to various non-existent FTP sites :-/
- acqq 16y agoDo you a favor and search the net for the oldest preserved sources of C compilers and UNIX. Then take a look at them, especially how concise they are. I'd enjoy reading your post about that experience. :)
- eliben 16y agoSince you appear to be knowledgeable in these matters, perhaps you could point out to such a source :) FWIW I did mention 'tcc' in the article, the "tiny c compiler" with rather compact and clean source code, probably smaller than the code for Bison
- acqq 16y agoPrimeval C: two very early compilers http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2506032 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2506032
- eliben 16y agoGreat, thanks!
- acqq 16y agoThe full Unix V source is here as tar: http://unixarchive.tliquest.net/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v5/ http://unixarchive.tliquest.net/PDP-11/Distributions/researc... In 500 K gzipped tar you have at least the whole unix, the whole stdlib and the whole C compiler. For the book that explains the sources see: Book: Lion's Commentary on the Sixth Ed Unix http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2506176 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2506176