Modern Compiler Design (Paperback)

~ D. Grune (Author), H. Bal (Author), C. Jacobs (Author), K. Langendoen (Author) "Figures 2.5 through 2.12 contain the elements of a simple but non-trivial lexical analyzer that recognizes five classes of tokens: identifiers as defined above, integers,..." (more)
Key Phrases: narrow compiler, simple symbolic interpretation, demo compiler, Base Tag, Store Reg, Load Mem (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There's nothing this programmer likes more in a book than a structured, logical layout, and Modern Compiler Design has it by the bucketful. [...] this excellent book covers not just procedural languages, but object-oriented, functional, logic and parallel/distributed languages too. [...] a well-written and thorough book [...] recommended for the compiler novice." - David Johns in Application Development Advisor, Nov/Dec 2000

Product Description

A compiler is one of the most vital parts of a computers system software, translating programs written in a high-level language into low-level commands that the machine can understand and execute. Most compiler design books focus only on techniques for imperative (or procedural) languages like C or Pascal, whereas Modern Compiler Design also covers compilation techniques for object-oriented, functional, logic and distributed languages. Features of the book include:

• A focus on essential traditional and advanced techniques common to all language paradigms, giving readers the skills required for modern compiler construction.
• Coverage of all the major programming language types - imperative, object-oriented, functional, logic and distributed languages.
• A practical emphasis on implementation and optimization techniques, including tools for automating compiler design.
• A strong intuitive style, illustrated by many practical examples.

All the authors are experienced teachers and researchers in programming languages and their implementation and have acquired a wealth of experience in compiler construction for a variety of languages. This experience has also been reflected in previous texts on Programming Languages, Programming Distributed Systems and Parsing Techniques.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 754 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1st edition (August 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471976970
• ISBN-13: 978-0471976974
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #997,096 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Requires additional references, February 24, 2003

By	James Sullivan "[e-mail]" (Chicago IL United States) - See all my reviews

I bought this book as an introduction to Compiler Design and to that end I have found it quite useful. The material is dense, so expect to have to re-read chapters quite often. Also, I have found it necessary to supplement this book with additional resources to fully understand what Grune is attempting to explain, particularly with chapter 3, which covers attribute grammars. The book's english can be poor sometimes so expect to have to back-track over convulted sentences. Overall, however, this book succeeds in being useful as an introduction to the theory. The authors skip implementation details, so if you are expecting to be able to actually write a compiler when you are done, you are going to be needing additional sources.

Pros: 1)great introduction to theory and maintains enough detail in each section to keep you interested. 2) Book is organized well. Each chapter represents the next step in compiler design. 3) This book covers theory, not implementation...it does not bind itself to one particular language

Cons: 1) Expect to check-out or buy additional reading to supplement this book. 2) The english often leaves something to be desired. 3) The excercises at the end of each chapter were obviously just "thrown-in" at the end. They are quite poor.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good compilers text, June 4, 2001

By A Customer

This is really an excellent book that proves that a computer science text can have huge scope and be rigorous yet still do a good job of teaching and presenting its topics. Well written and laid-out. I would recommend it to anyone doing a course in compilers, provided you know the relevant chapters to choose to read (it goes way beyond the scope of an intro course) and any more advanced course. This book was actually recommended to over the "dragon book". It is more up-to-date and relevant.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good bits but somewhat boring, March 2, 2006

By	Andrei Formiga (Joao Pessoa, Brasil) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Yes, this is a good text about compilers, mainly about theory. It has good insights into the area of compiler design, and it approaches many topics with ideas that aren't common in compiler books. However, many of these topics are only touched upon, with no depth, requiring you to look for other references.

Other very good feature of the book is covering compilation of languages from other paradigms. Most compiler books are geared towards mainstream imperative and object-oriented languages. This one has chapters on compilation of functional, logic and parallel programming languages as well. There is ample evidence that declarative programming paradigms in general, and functional programming in particular, are becoming ever more important in the computing industry, and this trend should go on. After all, throughout all the history of computing, the trend was always to go for more abstraction and less implementation details. So it's important to take contact with other paradigms.

Ok, so it's good in general. But it is incredibly boring to read, and I say that as someone who's very into compilers and own a lot of books on the subject. As another reviewer said, the text is often convoluted and hard to read; the organization is mostly good, but it tends to have big sections and big chapters (some very big chapters). Add to that the completely uninspiring layout and typography -- really, it's a very dull and bland look -- and I had serious trouble to read some chapters. Besides, the pseudo-code notation is really bad; better typography for the pseudo-code sections could help too.

To sum it up, if you only have to buy a single book on compilers, I would recommend against this one. Try "Engineering a Compiler" by Cooper & Torczon or wait the new edition of the dragon book by Aho et al. This one is good maybe as a second book, to get complementary insights and new ideas to explore about compilers, especially if you are researching on them, or looking for new ideas to escape from the mainstream.

But if there's ever another edition of this book, I would seriously recommend the authors to rethink its layout and typography to make it more attractive, get help with improving the text and break some chapters and sections in more maneageable pieces. Then it would be a really great book about compilers.