From: oz@nexus.yorku.ca (ozan s. yigit)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: three mini-reviews
Date: 22 Mar 1995 00:53:43 MET
Organization: The Electric Skillet
Distribution: world
* Christopher Fraser and David Hanson
A Retargetable C Compiler: Design and Implementation
Benjamin/Cummings, 1995
here is an entire C compiler as a literate [noweb] program. lcc may well
be the most readable production-quality compiler in existence, thanks
to its authors and this book. each chapter covers an essential part of
the compiler [eg. generating intermediate code, register allocation etc]
and closes with further reading and exercises. like the compiler itself,
the book is fat-free. [a yacc parser along with lcc's own recursive
descent parser would have been instructive.] clean code, clean layout,
with helpful mini indexes. tech report prose. recommended good reading
even for those who never have to work with compilers.
* Patrice Boizumault
The Implementation of Prolog
Princeton Series in Computer Science
Princeton University Press, 1993
this book is based on Boizumault's thesis, and was originally published
in french as Prolog: L'Implantation, 1988. good to finally have it in
english. prolog is a language filled with interesting implementation
problems, and this book is an enlightening synthesis of solutions offered
by various implementations. it covers every important aspect of prolog
anatomy, and concludes with three small implementations (mini-cprolog,
mini-wam, mini-prolog-II) in common lisp, and detailed discussion.
[i wish i could fuse this book with Meier/Warren's "Computing With
Logic" somehow.] translation is stiff in places, but never mind.
recommended reading for serious language types.
* Donald E. Knuth and Silvio Levy
The CWEB System of Structured Documentation
Addison-Wesley, 1994.
This is the large literate book edition [with a spidery C++ on the
cover] of ctangle and cweave source, the C versions of tangle and
weave which everyone knows about. [he runs out of his office with joy!]
as with other knuth books, entertaining and educational, but nowhere
near as meaty as, say "TeX: The Program". those who are interested in
literate programming tools and languages should almost certainly get a
copy. it makes a good benchmark, a pointer to one possible destination.
[for additional oxygen, also get a copy of "Human Factors and Typography
for More Readable Programs" by Baecker and Marcus.]
oz
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