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by nils-m-holm 3218 days ago
People finding compilers intimidating is exactly my audience. :)

http://www.t3x.org/t3x/book.html

Please excuse the shameless plug!

2 comments

I have been reading the T3X book and code and I have to say that I am a huge fan of your work. I haven't finished reading it yet, but I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far! I can do successful 'make test' on Linux and NetBSD, but a trivial T3X program seems to misbehave on NetBSD. I look forward to getting to the bottom of it.

A quick question, if you don't mind: why do t.c and t.t differ slightly in the code emitted for t.memcmp, t.copy and t.fill? Thanks!!

Thanks! I'm glad you like my work!

The two compilers differ because I stopped applying non-essential modifications to t.c as soon as it was good enough to bootstrap t.t. There are also some edges cases that t.c does not catch. I think it's best to not use it for anything but bootstrapping!

Let me know about that misbehaving NetBSD program when you find out what caused it -- or even if you don't!

I own a number of the Nils Holm books on language implementation and they are all wonderful in a compact, approachable and real-world way that text books are not. A great companion to any programming language course.