Ask HN: Best book about compilers?

10 pointspipu8y ago5 comments

I would like to grab a book on compilers but am not sure which one to choose.

The Dragon book (Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools) is the one that gets recommended everywhere but that doesn't always mean it's the best. I find that many people recommend books they've actually not read and/or they haven't read anything else on the subject which makes it a bit tough to say the one they're familiar with is the best.

Some have said the dragon book is unbalanced in content and for instance Modern Compiler Implementation in ML is better in that.

What is your opinion? Can you recommend some book over another one?

Also: I'm not sure if a 800 page brick is the best to get yourself familiar with ... anything(?). I'm most certainly sure the book I'm looking for doesn't have to cover every tiny little detail that could be useful to know every 0.000001 % of time.

Thanks!

5 comments

kjksf8y ago

I doubt people who actually do write compilers would get much of use of any book out there.

There are 2 main tasks a compiler does:

* parsing * optimized code generation

While nominally parsing is covered by books and there's loads of theory on it, production compilers (gcc, clang, Go, swift) pretty much always end up with hand-written recursive-descent parser, which are a lot work but their structure is rather simple.

Code generation is universally done by converting to SSA and then writing optimization passes on top of that. Again, lots of work and lots of optimization rules, but nothing earth shattering conceptually. Read up on SSA and study existing code like https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/src/cmd/compile/int... for real-life optimization.

Then there's linker stuff like generating pe/elf/mach-o executables, generating symbols etc., which isn't covered in books but there's documentation on-line on all those subjects and you can study existing code like https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/src/cmd/link/intern...

joe_loser8y ago

The book "Engineering a Compiler" (https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Compiler-Second-Keith-Coo...) is a good resource and reference; I keep it on my desk at work. Like other compiler books, it falls short in meeting all practical application purposes and does great with theory. Ideally, this book should be combined with looking at modern compiler implementations.

brudgers8y ago

I'm not sure it is the best, but it is clearly an alternative to the Dragon book.

https://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/

zerr8y ago

Is the dragon book really recommended nowadays? I don't think so, especially for starters.

hackermailman8y ago

CMU still uses the dragon book 2ed for their grad level compilers course https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15745/syllabus.html and Andrew Appel's compiler book for the undergrad course.

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