[GoLUG] or [parse] Backus-Naur form -- revisited

[David Billsbrough]

Original Message:

Once upon a time, Steve Litt <slitt at tro.....com> wrote:

> Thanks David. This is an OUTSTANDING reference!

> You're obviously way ahead of me on this journey. I feel like it's
> 1998 all over again.

> This is obviously on the distant fringes of my IQ and abilities. Where
> are Henry Richardson and Nickolai Zeldovich when we need them?

   { ..... trimmed ..... }


SteveT,

You can catch up then it get to the AST 'trees' stuff.  Now that I have
'heard' of these trees I don't really understand how they are build and
then how to use them for code generation.

There doesn't appear to be one 'True-way' that a compiler is built.  I
could write a whole lot of 'C' code to be a calculator utility or I might
pipe what I might "parse" and then "decode" and pipe it into another
already written utility like 'bc', 'dc' or 'calc'.   Or at least I think I can
at this point.

While we are it, let thank a guy named:  Anders Hejlsberg; who brought
serious programming to the desktop computing of affordiable hardware
to the hobbies and the kitchen-table hacker/programmer.

Quoting from this page:

   https://turbopascal.org/

>>> Many Pascal compilers for many different platforms were developed in the 1970s
>>> like UCSD Pascal, IP Pascal and Lisa Pascal to name only a few of them. In 1980
>>> Anders Hejlsberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg) developed Blue Label Pascal which was offered for the PC platform
>>> under different names. This compiler was later licensed by a software company
>>> Borland which added user interface and editor, changed the name to Turbo Pascal
>>> and offered it for a competitive price. Fast compiler (it was written in assembly language),
>>> integrated development environment which enabled fast edit-compile-run cycles and
>>> low price contributed to the popularity of Turbo Pascal.



regards,

David
--David Billsbrough (KC4ZVW)
QTH: Chuluota, FL -- grid: EL98kp