[mfukar]

I think the Dragon book is pretty approachable for someone with basic CS background. It's also quite extensive in its coverage of compiler implementation techniques. However, as others have already pointed out, certain aspects are not covered in full and implementation details are not always provided.

My suggestion? Read it. True to its title, "Principles, Techniques and Tools", it delivers just that. I don't think you'll find its contents impenetrable, but perhaps it will seem too abstract in case you're looking for implementation guidelines.

Some things that might bug you about the Dragon Book: 1) extensive coverage of lexical analysis and related techniques, 2) it's not suited for a more pragmatic course - this is better left to books like Muchnick's "Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation" and friends 3) it omits certain important advances in the field, such as the work of Pager, A Practical General Method for Constructing LR(k) Parsers. Acta Informatica 7, 249-268., 1977 (in all fairness to the book authors, all work after yacc was out in 1973 has apparently gone unnoticed by all).

Disclaimer: I've only read the Pearson International Edition, which according to what I hear, is identical to the first edition. I don't know to what extent this is true. Maybe someone can confirm/refute this?

[tonfa]

> It's also quite extensive in its coverage of compiler implementation techniques.

With only two pages about SSA ? (which is the internal representation used by most compilers this days)

[mfukar]

Yes.

The omission of SSA (which, remember, gained in popularity after the publication of R. Cytron, J. Ferrante, B. Rosen, M. Wegman, and K. Zadeck. Efficiently Computing Static Single Assignment Form and the Control Dependence Graph., ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 13(4):451-490, in October 1991) is in fact one of the many advances that fall in the (3) category I mentioned. I assumed I wouldn't have to enumerate every single one of them. Also, remember the edition I'm referring to. I have no idea if the latest edition (2007, iirc) covers SSA, and to what extent.

Nevertheless, the book is still extensive and thorough in the concepts it covers.

[tonfa]

I was referring to the 2007 edition (the first edition obviously doesn't mention it). It's a bit sad to see they didn't even think it deserved a chapter...

You can look at the new stuff from the 2nd edition here: http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/academic/product/0,1...