[antlr-interest] object oriented compiler implementation

George S. Cowan cowang at comcast.net
Wed Jun 22 17:08:06 PDT 2011


There is a whole other set of issues that need to be mentioned for
completeness, i.e., how do we build the symbol table and AST in the parser
so that we can generate the code in the way that the below books teach us.
Ter covers this at http://www.antlr.org/wiki/display/CS652/Symbol+tables and
in his book Language Implementation Patterns
http://pragprog.com/titles/tpdsl/language-implementation-patterns 

The book also gets us started on how to develop templates for language
implementation. We need this in order to translate the concepts for
implementing OO languages into templates that can be used to translate ANTLR
ASTs into code.

George Cowan


> -----Original Message-----
> From: antlr-interest-bounces at antlr.org [mailto:antlr-interest-
> bounces at antlr.org] On Behalf Of Mark Wright
> Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 10:34 AM
> To: Edwards, Waverly; antlr
> Subject: Re: [antlr-interest] object oriented compiler implementation
> 
> On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:43:49 -0500, "Edwards, Waverly"
> <Waverly.Edwards at genesys.com> wrote:
> > This is not directly ANTLR related but have any of you come across a
> guide,
> > tutorial or book (preferably) for implementing an compiler for an
> object
> > oriented language.  I don't mean the compiler is created using an
> object
> > oriented languages, though that would be good.  I mean what goes into
> > implementing subclassing, method overriding, hybrid language type
> safety
> > such as objective-c (static and dynamic type) enforcement.  Also
> things like
> > implementing exceptions and polymorphic variables.  I've used them in
> > languages but I haven't read how you might go about go about
> implementing
> > them.  I have a few compiler books but interestingly enough, they all
> deal
> > with procedural languages like C or Pascal.  None of them talk about
> the
> > innards of making compilers for object oriented languages.  I do own
> > "Language Implementation Patterns", which helped me understand scopes
> for
> > object languages.
> 
> Hi Waverly,
> 
> There is lots of information using type theory, functional programming,
> and proof assistants.  The book to start with using this approach is
> free:
> 
> http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis500/current/sf/html/index.html
> 
> The 2 main proof assistants for this sort of stuff are Coq and
> Isabelle.
> There seems to be more tutorial info on Coq.  A useful tool that can
> generate
> some Coq and Isabelle code is Ott:
> 
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/ott/
> 
> The chapter TypeChecking:
> 
> http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis500/current/sf/html/Typechecking.html
> 
> describes how to prove that a Coq fixpoint function for the type
> checker
> is equivalent to the Coq propositions that are more convenient to work
> with in the proof assistant.  Ott can generate the propositions,
> looking
> at those can help with writing the fixpoints, and then Haskell or Ocaml
> code can be extracted from the fixpoints.  Or you could just look
> at the fixpoints as a guide and write the type checker in a functional
> programming language
> 
> Lots of very useful type theory/Coq videos here:
> 
> http://vimeo.com/user5565394/videos/page:1/sort:newest
> 
> The Software Foundations book does not cover object orientented
> languages,
> but the theory is required to understand books that do.  There are
> different
> types of subtyping in type theory.
> 
> The standard text on type theory does have some discussion on object
> oriented languages:
> 
> Types and Programming Languages, by Benjamin C. Pierce. MIT Press,
> 2002.
> 
> There are 2 obscure books on type theory and object oriented langauges:
> 
> (1) Foundations of Object-Oriented Languages by Kim Bruce
> 
> The first half is an easy discussion on object oriented type systems
> that you would probably find useful even if you don't use the type
> theory
> approach.
> 
> The second half uses type theory, proof sketches, which is useful if
> you wanted to use type theory.
> 
> (2) A Theory of Objects (Monographs in Computer Science) by Martin
> Abadi and
> Luca Cardelli
> 
> its an expensive book, I have not read it.  It develops its own object
> calculus which I guess would make it hard to understand this book.
> 
> There are other references in the postscript:
> 
> http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis500/current/sf/html/Postscript.html
> 
> If you write the compiler using a functional programming language, then
> I think the standard approach is use continuations, that is described
> in this book:
> 
> Compiling with Continuations by Andrew W. Appel
> 
> and 2 chapters in this book (seems to be more on interpreters than
> compilers though):
> 
> Essentials of Programming Languages by Daniel P. Friedman and Mitchell
> Wand
> 
> Regards, Mark
> 
> > I'm hoping to start with a book that lets you know what to do, what
> not to
> > do and why you don't want to do it that way.  I'd like to start with
> making
> > fresh mistakes versus ones that have been made over and over again.
> 
> > Thank you kindly,
> >
> > Waverly
> >
> >
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