A practical tool kit for making portable compilers

ABSTRACT

The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is an integrated collection of programs designed to simplify the task of producing portable (cross) compilers and interpreters. For each language to be compiled, a program (called a front end) must be written to translate the source program into a common intermediate code. This intermediate code can be optimized and then either directly interpreted or translated to the assembly language of the desired target machine. The paper describes the various pieces of the tool kit in some detail, as well as discussing the overall strategy.

REFERENCES

• 1: Graham, S.L. Table-driven code generation. Computer 13, 8 (August 1980), 25-34. A discussion of systematic ways to do code generation, in particular, the idea of having a table with templates that match parts of the parse tree and convert them into machine instructions.
• 2: Haddon, B.K. and Waite, W.M. Experience with the universal intermediate language Janus. Software Practice and Experience 8, 5 (Sept.- Oct. 1978), 601-616. An intermediate language for use with Algol 68, Pascal, etc. is described. The paper discusses some of the problems encountered and how they were dealt with.
• 3: S. C. Johnson, A portable compiler: theory and practice, Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on Principles of programming languages, p.97-104, January 23-25, 1978, Tucson, Arizona [doi>10.1145/512760.512771]
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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Compilers

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Translator writing systems and compiler generators

General Terms:
Design, Languages

Keywords:
compiler, interpreter, portability, translator