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Build Your Own Programming Language

Build Your Own Programming Language

By : Clinton L. Jeffery
4.4 (17)
Buy this Book
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Build Your Own Programming Language

Build Your Own Programming Language

4.4 (17)
By: Clinton L. Jeffery
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

The need for different types of computer languages is growing rapidly and developers prefer creating domain-specific languages for solving specific application domain problems. Building your own programming language has its advantages. It can be your antidote to the ever-increasing size and complexity of software. In this book, you’ll start with implementing the frontend of a compiler for your language, including a lexical analyzer and parser. The book covers a series of traversals of syntax trees, culminating with code generation for a bytecode virtual machine. Moving ahead, you’ll learn how domain-specific language features are often best represented by operators and functions that are built into the language, rather than library functions. We’ll conclude with how to implement garbage collection, including reference counting and mark-and-sweep garbage collection. Throughout the book, Dr. Jeffery weaves in his experience of building the Unicon programming language to give better context to the concepts where relevant examples are provided in both Unicon and Java so that you can follow the code of your choice of either a very high-level language with advanced features, or a mainstream language. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to build and deploy your own domain-specific languages, capable of compiling and running programs.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
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Preface
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Preface
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Who this book is for
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What this book covers
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To get the most out of this book
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Download the example code files
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Code in Action
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Download the color images
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Conventions used
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Get in touch
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Share Your Thoughts
1
Section 1: Programming Language Frontends
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Section 1: Programming Language Frontends
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Chapter 1: Why Build Another Programming Language?
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Chapter 1: Why Build Another Programming Language?
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So, you want to write your own programming language…
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Language versus library – what's the difference?
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Applicability to other software engineering tasks
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Establishing the requirements for your language
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Case study – requirements that inspired the Unicon language
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 2: Programming Language Design
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Chapter 2: Programming Language Design
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Determining the kinds of words and punctuation to provide in your language
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Specifying the control flow
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Deciding on what kinds of data to support
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Overall program structure
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Completing the Jzero language definition
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Case study – designing graphics facilities in Unicon
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 3: Scanning Source Code
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Chapter 3: Scanning Source Code
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Technical requirements
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Lexemes, lexical categories, and tokens
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Regular expressions
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Using UFlex and JFlex
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Writing a scanner for Jzero
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Regular expressions are not always enough
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 4: Parsing
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Chapter 4: Parsing
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Technical requirements
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Analyzing syntax
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Understanding context-free grammars
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Using iyacc and BYACC/J
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Writing a parser for Jzero
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Improving syntax error messages
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 5: Syntax Trees
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Chapter 5: Syntax Trees
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Technical requirements
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Using GNU make
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Learning about trees
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Creating leaves from terminal symbols
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Building internal nodes from production rules
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Forming syntax trees for the Jzero language
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Debugging and testing your syntax tree
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Summary
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Questions
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Section 2: Syntax Tree Traversals
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Section 2: Syntax Tree Traversals
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Chapter 6: Symbol Tables
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Chapter 6: Symbol Tables
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Technical requirements
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Establishing the groundwork for symbol tables
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Creating and populating symbol tables for each scope
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Checking for undeclared variables
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Finding redeclared variables
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Handling package and class scopes in Unicon
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Testing and debugging symbol tables
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 7: Checking Base Types
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Chapter 7: Checking Base Types
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Technical requirements
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Type representation in the compiler
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Assigning type information to declared variables
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Determining the type at each syntax tree node
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Runtime type checks and type inference in Unicon
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 8: Checking Types on Arrays, Method Calls, and Structure Accesses
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Chapter 8: Checking Types on Arrays, Method Calls, and Structure Accesses
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Technical requirements
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Checking operations on array types
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Checking method calls
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Checking structured type accesses
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 9: Intermediate Code Generation
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Chapter 9: Intermediate Code Generation
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Technical requirements
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Preparing to generate code
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An intermediate code instruction set
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Annotating syntax trees with labels for control flow
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Generating code for expressions
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Generating code for control flow
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Summary
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Chapter 10: Syntax Coloring in an IDE
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Chapter 10: Syntax Coloring in an IDE
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Downloading the example IDEs used in this chapter
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Integrating a compiler into a programmer's editor
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Avoiding reparsing the entire file on every change
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Using lexical information to colorize tokens
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Highlighting errors using parse results
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Adding Java support
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Summary
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Section 3: Code Generation and Runtime Systems
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Section 3: Code Generation and Runtime Systems
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Chapter 11: Bytecode Interpreters
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Chapter 11: Bytecode Interpreters
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Technical requirements
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Understanding what bytecode is
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Comparing bytecode with intermediate code
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Building a bytecode instruction set for Jzero
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Implementing a bytecode interpreter
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Writing a runtime system for Jzero
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Running a Jzero program
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Examining iconx, the Unicon bytecode interpreter
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 12: Generating Bytecode
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Chapter 12: Generating Bytecode
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Technical requirements
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Converting intermediate code to Jzero bytecode
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Comparing bytecode assembler with binary formats
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Linking, loading, and including the runtime system
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Unicon example – bytecode generation in icont
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 13: Native Code Generation
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Chapter 13: Native Code Generation
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Technical requirements
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Deciding whether to generate native code
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Introducing the x64 instruction set
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Using registers
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Converting intermediate code to x64 code
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Generating x64 output
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 14: Implementing Operators and Built-In Functions
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Chapter 14: Implementing Operators and Built-In Functions
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Implementing operators
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Writing built-in functions
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Integrating built-ins with control structures
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Developing operators and functions for Unicon
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 15: Domain Control Structures
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Chapter 15: Domain Control Structures
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Knowing when you need a new control structure
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Scanning strings in Icon and Unicon
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Rendering regions in Unicon
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 16: Garbage Collection
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Chapter 16: Garbage Collection
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Appreciating the importance of garbage collection
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Counting references to objects
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Marking live data and sweeping the rest
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Summary
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Questions
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Chapter 17: Final Thoughts
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Chapter 17: Final Thoughts
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Reflecting on what was learned from writing this book
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Deciding where to go from here
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Exploring references for further reading
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Summary
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Section 4: Appendix
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Section 4: Appendix
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Assessments
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Chapter 1
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Chapter 2
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 4
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Chapter 5
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Chapter 6
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Chapter 7
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Chapter 8
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Chapter 11
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Chapter 12
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Chapter 13
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Chapter 14
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Chapter 15
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Chapter 16
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Why subscribe?
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Other Books You May Enjoy
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Other Books You May Enjoy
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Packt is searching for authors like you
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Share Your Thoughts
Appendix: Unicon Essentials
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Appendix: Unicon Essentials
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Running Unicon
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Using Unicon's declarations and data types
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Evaluating expressions
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Debugging and environmental issues
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Function mini-reference
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Selected keywords

Chapter 1: Why Build Another Programming Language?

This book will show you how to build your own programming language, but first, you should ask yourself, why would I want to do this? For a few of you, the answer will be simple: because it is so much fun. However, for the rest of us, it is a lot of work to build a programming language, and we need to be sure about it before we make a start. Do you have the patience and persistence that it takes?

This chapter points out a few good reasons for building your own programming language, as well as some situations where you don't have to build your contemplated language; after all, designing a class library for your application domain might be simpler and just as effective. However, libraries have their downsides, and sometimes only a new language will do.

After this chapter, the rest of this book will, having considered things carefully, take for granted that you have decided to build a language. In that case, you should determine some of the requirements for your language. But first, we're going to cover the following main topics in this chapter:

  • Motivations for writing your own programming language
  • The difference between programming languages and libraries
  • The applicability of programming language tools to other software projects
  • Establishing the requirements for your language
  • A case study that discusses the requirements for the Unicon language

Let's start by looking at motivations.

End of Section 1
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