6 Jan
2012
6 Jan
'12
4:08 a.m.
On 05/01/12 2:55 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
ITYM !=
> C is
pretty good for writing compilers, and it takes little more than
> "The dragon book" (Aho& Ullman) plus a LOT of time and effort to
produce
> one.
On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 vintagecoder at aol.com wrote:
Emphasis on a LOT of time, I looked at the book
and gave up! Blinded me,
with SCIENCE!
Same here. But, then I sat through Alan Holub's "Compiler Writing" class.
It was a great experience. But, now the dragon book seems simple in
comparison. Holub and I have chatted on occasion. I feel strongly that C
code on the blackboard needs to be spread out into multiple statements to
make it easiest and quickest to follow and understand. Holub doesn't
agree. But, he couldn't see why IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM had to be
contiguous at the beginning of the disk.
My canonical example,
while (*T++=*S++);
just for the sake of readability, is easier for a beginner OR STUDENT to
follow as something like:
do
{
X = *S;
*T = X;
S++;
T++;
}
while('\0'<> X); /* Yes, of course, (X), but that's my point. */
(Readability and ease of understanding is more important than efficiency
for EXPLAINING something)
The long version isn't less efficient.
--T
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com