Customer Reviews

Introduction to Compiler Construction

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I think Parsons had an intelligent idea in writing this book. Without originality claims (as he point out in the preface) the book is intended to the audience of novices, with the clear target of explaining in great details compilers principles. As he says in the preface, the objective is to prepare the reader for more advanced lectures, and he explicitly mention the reference book as an example: Aho-Sethi-Ullman's "Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools", a.k.a the Dragon book.

The approach is quite theoretical and principles-centered, just as the Dragon book is. But Parsons departs from this in the writing style: It is definitely straightforward. He sacrifices the scope of the book in favor of clarity: he took the core of books like the Dragon, and expanded this core to a well appreaciable extent. It comes over and over again on more awkward concepts with detailed examples.
Reading the Dragon is not extremely difficult, but requires time. No question that doing it after Parsons' is another thing, absolutely. In this, he succeeded perfectly in its objective.

The price is definitely not exaggerated (especially for the paperback version), and adding this to the book's quality, should not let think twice in buying it.

I'm a computer science professor and have taught compiler construction for several years. Parsons teaches the material the way it ought to be. He is clear and concise without leaving out any of the essential material.

Excelent book! The author approaches the subject in concise and objective way clearly allowing to an agreement to more complex topics of the construction of compilers.

In my opinion, only one deeper treatment would have to be given to the symbol table.

The strong point of the book is the clarity and efficiency with that the analysis bottom up is dealt, what it takes the reader to the perfect knowledge of the LALR parser.

I am a Professor in Computer Science and of course I use dragon book as the text book for teaching Compiler Design to undergraduate students. The most interesting thing which I noticed with this book by Prof. Thomas Parsons is its lucid presentation. He has left no stone unturned to explain the basics very clearly and of course with very little emphasis on mathematical background. As he himself make this point clearly in his introduction, it can definitely be used to learn the fundamentals very clearly with enough examples. I admire the book very much and would definitely recommend to all my students who would be interested in using a nice introductory book before embarking on their journey through dragon book.

As an instructor who uses the text book in class I had expected to get a copy of the solutions for free, but I couldn't. I was very unhappy with the quality of the product that arrived in the mail. This book is printed on newsprint-like paper. I guess it was intended to be given away to instructors, so produced very cheaply. But it's not good enough for paying customers. That's a pity because the actual text book is excellent.

i'm a teacher . I am teaching a bout compiler linker, loader