"Crafting a Compiler" summary of reviews.

[Bob Mastors]

Following is a summary of responses.  The original question was:

> Has anyone read "Crafting a Compiler" by Fischer and LeBlanc?
> Is it worth $46 considering I already have the dragon book?

These are the responses mailed to me, not the ones posted to
comp.lang.c.

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It's a good book, less theory, more understandable/practical than the
dragon book.  Depends how much $46 is for you... :-)

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Yes.  I have both the red dragon book and "Crafting a Compiler".
Crafting is slightly more recent (1988 vs. 1986) and is written
from a decidedly ADA-like perspective.  It is an excellent book
and well worth the investment.

Crafting is written with a slightly more "practical" persepective
than the more theoretical dragon book.  That is not to say that
it does not go into the theory of parsing, automata, code generation,
etc.

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Yup. It's the first compiler book I bought that actually
showed me the nuts-and-bolts of writing a compiler. It shows
you in ADA-like psuedo-code exactly what you need; from
declarations to actual code.

Very good book.  Glad I bought it.

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I liked both of them.  crafting gives Ada style psuedo code which has
a lot of boiler plate though.  A. Holub's new book is a better buy --
done with real C.

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It is quite a good book; I believe it is somewhat more practically
oriented than the dragon book.  It also is easier to carry. :-)

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We used it as the main text for our compiler course a couple of years
ago, which I TA'ed, with the dragon book as a secondary reference. It
is excellent, and gives information about actual implementation
techniques that the dragon book glosses over.

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Thanks to all who responded.
	Bob

---
Bob Mastors
Epoch Systems, Westboro MA (508) 836-4711 x317 (voice)
                           (508) 836-4884 (fax)
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