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Build Your Own Programming Language

You're reading from   Build Your Own Programming Language A programmer's guide to designing compilers, interpreters, and DSLs for modern computing problems

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2024
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781804618028
Length 556 pages
Edition 2nd Edition
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Author (1):
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Clinton  L. Jeffery Clinton L. Jeffery
Author Profile Icon Clinton L. Jeffery
Clinton L. Jeffery
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Toc

Table of Contents (27) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Section I: Programming Language Frontends
2. Why Build Another Programming Language? FREE CHAPTER 3. Programming Language Design 4. Scanning Source Code 5. Parsing 6. Syntax Trees 7. Section II: Syntax Tree Traversals
8. Symbol Tables 9. Checking Base Types 10. Checking Types on Arrays, Method Calls, and Structure Accesses 11. Intermediate Code Generation 12. Syntax Coloring in an IDE 13. Section III: Code Generation and Runtime Systems
14. Preprocessors and Transpilers 15. Bytecode Interpreters 16. Generating Bytecode 17. Native Code Generation 18. Implementing Operators and Built-In Functions 19. Domain Control Structures 20. Garbage Collection 21. Final Thoughts 22. Section IV: Appendix
23. Answers
24. Other Books You May Enjoy
25. Index
Appendix: Unicon Essentials

Checking for undeclared variables

To find undeclared variables, check the symbol table on each variable that’s used for assignment or dereferencing. These reads and writes of memory occur in the executable statements and the expressions whose values are computed within those statements. Given a syntax tree, how do you find them?

The answer is to use tree traversals that look for IDENTIFIER tokens but only when they are in executable statements within blocks of code. To go about this, start from the top with a tree traversal that just finds the blocks of code. In Jzero, this is a traversal that finds the bodies of methods.

Identifying the bodies of methods

The check_codeblocks() method traverses the tree from the top to find all the method bodies, which is where the executable code is in Jzero. For every method declaration it finds, it calls another method called check_block() on that method’s body. In tree.icn, the Unicon version is:

method check_codeblocks...
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