Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (Hardcover)

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Product Description

This introduction to compilers is the direct descendant of the well-known book by Aho and Ullman, Principles of Compiler Design. The authors present updated coverage of compilers based on research and techniques that have been developed in the field over the past few years. The book provides a thorough introduction to compiler design and covers topics such as context-free grammars, fine state machines, and syntax-directed translation. 0201100886B04062001

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0201100886B04062001

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 796 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley; US ed edition (January 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201100886
• ISBN-13: 978-0201100884
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #160,543 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #3 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools > Compiler Design
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed by this new reprint, February 7, 2006

By	Bl0b "BC" (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Compilers 1/e plus Selected Online Chapters from Compilers 2/e Update Package (Hardcover)

When I ordered this book I thought it is a second edition that includes new or revised chapters. I was wrong. The book itself is identical with the first edition (I wouldn't even say this is a second edition, it is a re-print), the only difference is that they give you a card with an access code to the www.aw-bc.com/dragonbook website where you can download some online chapters.

For 105$ it is pretty disappointing especially when you own the old book. The book description on the amazon website doesn't make it clear that you get the same book as before + online chapters.

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding reference for C, Fortran, and Pascal compilers, March 14, 2000

By	Daniel Mall "engineersoftware" (San Gabriel, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

During each compiler stage (lexical analysis, syntax analysis, translation, type checking, translation, code generation, and code optimization) multiple methods, strategies, and algorithms are presented. This comprehensive book examines items that are unique to the various languages presented (Fortran, C, and Pascal); there are even sections on dealing with estimation of types (10.12) and symbolic debugging of optimized code (10.13). Wow! The exercises are thorough, challenging, and thought provoking. Examples are interleaved with the discussion and algorithms. There is an excellent set of historical and bibliographic information at the end of each chapter. The use of automated tools such as lex, yacc, and compiler-generators is discussed throughout the text. This is an advanced book, however a good understanding of compilers can be obtained without understanding the details of every algorithm.

81 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The reference book ... depending on your needs, April 19, 2002

By	G. Avvinti (Sicily, Italy) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Once again, I want to point out the title of the book: "Principles, Techniques and Tools".
I think there are two kinds of compilers books available today: "Principles and Theory centered" ones and "Modern Compilers design and implementation" ones.
One might wonder what's the difference between the two.

The former kind is more suited for a course on theoretical aspects that lay the foundation of compiler construction. DFAs, NFAs and Regular expression along with relations and equivalence between the them; FSAs minimizations; grammars and Push-down FSAs in details, ambiguities and and how to cope with them; and so on.
This is what I mean for "theoretical aspects". And these topics are covered in great details in this book. Almost the same details they (the authors) placed on writing a more specific book as "Introduction to Automata Theory ...".
Same situation applies to principles on more application- oriented topics. Take the example of LR parsing. You can face the topic from a more theoretical side, dealing with details on bottom up parsing (still, it implies an in-depth knowledge of grammars theory), handles and (viable) prefixes, SLR or canonical LR or LALR parsers and techniques for the relative tables construction by hands (and for this, add a detailed and solid knowledge of Push-down FSAs along with grammars). By hands, at least, if principles are what matter in your course.
If you expect to find these topics (with this depth) in a book of the other kind, you might get mislead. As I did when I still had not clear this distinction, before I took the course.

The latter kind of books is more suited for a more pragmatic course. One where real, "modern" compilers are at hands, and probably written as homeworks. In this case, time being always limited in a university course, one (the instructor) will likely have to give up with those theoretical aspects (or just mention them) and focus on coding techniques and modern compiler studying. But ... perhaps, for these purposes books like Grune's "Modern Compiler Design", or Pittman's "Art of Compiler Design, The: Theory and Practice" or, at some degrees, Muchnick's "Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation" will be more suited.
Back to the LR parsing example, more pragmatic compilers design courses will (for time constraints) just have a glance on principles and spend a considerable time learning YACC. To do both things you would have to take a course on YACC alone (it requires time to exploit all of its advanced features, you can be sure of this).

All this said, once again: which is the best book ? The one that best fits your needs. And in fact, my needs were those of my course, which was completely centered on theoretical aspects. And for this course, the Dragon book (as it is better known since its cover) proved to be perfect, definitely no matter it was published on 1986: FSAs and grammars and their theory is (for all practical purposes) still the same since even before then.