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

Product type Paperback

Published in Jan 2024

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781804618028

Length 556 pages

Edition 2nd Edition

Languages

Java

Tools

Java EE

Concepts

Programming Language

Author (1):

Clinton L. Jeffery

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Table of Contents (27) Chapters

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

Downloading the software used in this chapter

In this chapter, we will be looking at one mainstream commercially supported IDE, plus a simpler IDE that illustrates some of the concepts presented. The first IDE is Visual Studio Code, a free IDE that you can download from http://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads. Since we are extending Visual Studio Code to know about your new language, additional tools are required. Microsoft’s instructions say to install Git (which you have probably already installed in order to access the book’s code on GitHub) and Node.js (from https://nodejs.org/en/download/current).

Node.js in turn installs many software components, including Python and some Visual Studio development tools. This requires a strong internet connection, many minutes of time, and requires quite a leap of blind faith on your part. Have fun. If the Node.js install went well, you should be able to install a tool called Yeoman with the command: