Reviews (57)

Contentgood, media a problem
I got the version 1/e plus selected online chapters 2/e
Classic
Some problems are solved in this business and answers are published in one place. "Compilers" is a solved problem. This is the one place to see the solution.

still definitive after 20 years
For twenty years, this book has stood as the definitive text on compiler design. Many programmers use a compiler to write programs. Only a small subset actually write [or debug] compilers. It is for the latter that the book is dedicated. Though perhaps the broader group of programmers could also benefit ["culture"] from knowing the general ideas in the book.
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Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Compilers (Computer programs)    3. Computer Architecture - General    4. Computer Books: General    5. Computers    6. Computers - General Information    7. Compilers & interpreters    8. Computers / Computer Architecture    9. Systems analysis & design   

Editorial Review

Optimizing compilers, which turn human-readable programming languages into the smallest, most efficient machine code possible, are among the most complex pieces of software ever written. Building a compiler is both science and black art and demands an intimate knowledge of data structures, algorithms, high-level programming languages, and processor architectures and their instruction sets. Read more

Reviews (14)

Confusing at best
I've seen chapter 14 of this book referenced (by a university professor giving suggestion to his students, not by a random guy) as:
Good for seasoned compiler writers, bad for CS students
Ok, let's be fair. This book provides a broad coverage of useful optimizations and it will be useful in case you work writing compilers AND have some experience.
Excellent
Advances in compiler design do not get much press these days. The reasons for this are unclear, but no doubt the perception that compilers need no further improvement has something to do with this. This book, written by one of the leading experts on compilers, certainly dispels this belief. Once readers get used to the idiosyncratic ICAN (Informal Compiler Algorithm Notation) invented by the author and used throughout the book, they get a comprehensive overview of compilers, especially that of optimization. Compilers for the SPARC, PowerPC, DEC, and Pentium architectures are treated in the book. The predominant emphasis of the book is in optimization, and so a few more recent and important topics in compiler construction, such as partial evaluation, are not discussed. Readers are expected to have a prior background in elementary compiler theory. My primary interest in reading the book was to gain insight into the compilation issues that arise in symbolic programming languages such as LISP and Prolog. Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Compilers (Computer Science)    3. Compilers (Computer programs)    4. Computer Architecture - General    5. Computer Books: Operating Systems    6. Computers    7. Computers - General Information    8. Programming - Software Development    9. Systems programming (Computer    10. Systems programming (Computer science)    11. Compilers & interpreters    12. Computers / Programming / Software Development   

Reviews (5)

A great starter guide to writing a compiler
I recently used this book to supplement the Dragon book in a Compilers course. I found this book so much easier to read and understand. They do a great job of laying out the basics and introducing you to compiler design.
Terrible for Starters
This book was the textbook for an undergraduate course on compilers.Let me make it short:I never read it after reading the first chapter.The authors may be top experts on compilers but they shouldn't be writing books. Another book written in 1982 (compilers, principles, techniques and tools) saved my life for this class.If you are a beginner "do not buy this book".

Super compiler text!
This is really a super compiler text. It is also one of the most recent compiler books you can buy.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Architecture - General    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computers    4. General    5. Technology & Industrial Arts    6. Compilers & interpreters    7. Computer architecture & logic design    8. Computers / Computer Science    9. Systems analysis & design   

Reviews (3)

Excellent! Very practical and useful
I have had this book for 8 years. It clearly describes compiler theories and examples. It is very useful when I develop very fast parser.(The code generated by lex isn't fast enough.) I am not in the compiler writingbusiness. This book is perfect for me.

Don't hesitate to buy this one: you won't be sorry!!
This book is a must have. It uses the dragon book (Compilers: principles, techniques and tools by Aho et.al) as a model but goes a great deal further in its use of examples when explaining the theory. Whenever I had a little trouble understanding the dragon book or wished that more examples wereused I turned to Holub's book. The book is extremely well organized. If youwant the theory its all there and if you want to just look at code its allthere too: thousands of lines of it! After explaining everything youactually get to see how lex and yacc are built (from the ground up) andfinally a C compiler. BUY IT NOW!!

Just Fantastic
Only a few words. Using this book, I designed a few compilers for testing languages, using Portuguese words and commands. It is yet on the development age, but, without this book it would not be abler at all. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Computer Bks - Languages / Programming    3. Programming Languages - C    4. Programming Languages - General    5. Compilers & interpreters   

Reviews (3)

Very readable, very specific
This book is a very thorough look through all the ways you can extract and use parallelism and data dependencies advantageously in an optimized compiler, depending on your target architecture.As one example, this book contains every imaginable way to deal with arrays and loops and the maddeningly complex data dependancies that can result from their various interminglings.The book is refreshingly easy to read and contains pseudo-code and step-by-step examples everywhere you'd want to see them.

An excellent book on loop based optimization
Randy Allen and Ken Kennedy are famous for their contributions Finally, everything in one place.
As a researcher in the field, this book was immediately useful to me.Nearly every source code transformation and optimization technique that I'm aware of is present in this book, which often saves sifting through stacks of papers or looking for an elusive reference.If you're looking for a book to teach you the basics of how compilers work, it certainly is not the appropriate place to begin, but if you already have one good book on that then this book will make an excellent companion to it.It was slightly annoying that the book comes with two loose pages, one errata list and another to tape over a page early in the book, but that's what you get with 1st editions.Overall it's very good and the errors are very minor typos as opposed to factual goofs. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Compilers (Computer Science)    3. Compilers (Computer programs)    4. Computer Architecture - General    5. Computer Books: Operating Systems    6. Computer architecture    7. Computers    8. Computers - Languages / Programming    9. Compilers & interpreters    10. Computer architecture & logic design    11. Computers / Computer Architecture   

Reviews (2)

hands on guide
This book is geared towards the synopsys synthesis tools (as evident in the title). It gives brief explanations about vhdl and verilog coding style (which can be found in many other books).
ok for an introduction to the tools
This book is interesting as an introduction to these tools but needs more depth ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Application specific integrate    2. Application specific integrated circuits    3. CAD-CAM - General    4. Compilers    5. Compilers (Computer Science)    6. Compilers (Computer programs)    7. Computer-aided design    8. Data processing    9. Digital Integrated Circuit Design    10. Electronics - Digital    11. Engineering - Electrical & Electronic    12. Logic Design    13. Science/Mathematics    14. Technology    15. Technology & Industrial Arts    16. Circuits & components    17. Computers-CAD-CAM - General    18. Computers-Logic Design    19. Technology / Electronics / Circuits / General    20. Technology / Engineering / Electrical   

Reviews (1)

Interesting
As the title suggests the book discusses various approaches to program analysis and it discusses these approaches is pretty good detail, though purely theoretical with small WHILE languages.It would have helped to have used a real live example by considering a small chunk of any of the generally used languages.It has good appendices that covers on some mathematical concepts but be warned you need know your math, the kind described in Glynn winskel or John reynolds book, before you dig into this one.Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Compilers (Computer Science)    3. Computer Books: General    4. Computer programming    5. Computer programs    6. Computers    7. Computers - Languages / Programming    8. Programming - General    9. Programming - Software Development    10. Software Engineering    11. Abstract Interpretation    12. Computers / Logic Design    13. Computers / Programming / General    14. Constraint Based Analysis    15. Data Flow Analysis    16. Program Analysis    17. Program Transformation    18. Type Systems   

Reviews (1)

Easy to understand; complements Muchnick's bible
It is a good book to read and understand. I would strongly recommend that a prospective reader read Muchnick's book before this if he/she is new to optimising compilers. Readers with some basic understanding of the structure of optimising compilers can read this book and get a good deal out of it. These books would complement each other well. I have read only a few chapters and I felt that it is also fairly deep in content (atleast to me as a novice compiler writer). ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Code generators    2. Compilers    3. Compilers (Computer Science)    4. Compilers (Computer programs)    5. Computers    6. General    7. Machine Languages    8. Microprocessors    9. Programming Languages - Assembly Language    10. Science/Mathematics    11. Technology & Industrial Arts    12. Compilers & interpreters    13. Computers / Computer Engineering    14. Machine macro & assembly languages    15. Mathematics and Science    16. Reference works    17. Technology: General Issues   

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Reviews (2)

Concerning Tom Pittman
Tom Pittman is an excellent teacher. Having his instruction in writing is the second best thing. He was a pioneer in microcomputers, having created one of the first compilers available. Strongly Recommended.

Very good book on compilers
This book is the one of the best I'v ever seen on compiler design. It one of the books that was written several years ago but very helpful. The language is not simple, but exact. I recommend it to all students andspecialists who interested in compilers architecture. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Compilers (Computer Science)    3. Compilers (Computer programs)    4. Computer Architecture - General    5. Computer Books: General    6. Computer Books: Operating Systems    7. Computers    8. Computers - Languages / Programming    9. Programming - General    10. Programming Languages - General    11. Compilers & interpreters    12. Computers / Computer Architecture    13. Systems analysis & design   

Reviews (7)

Source code in Web is a bad choice
This book lays out the compiler's source code in Web (think Knuth), in which instead of seeing an entire program, you see a small fragment, and notes to look up the rest on a different page.In my opinion, this makes the book nearly impossible to read.
Very nice "Cookbook"
First of all, this book is not for starters in the area of compiler design. Starters in the area of compiler design who are looking for a 'cookbook', I recommend to read 'Programming Language Processors in Java: Compilers and Interpreters' by David Watt.
Excellent
This book is definitely _not_ for beginners, but compilers are not supposed to be written by novices -- if there is rocket science in computers, it is compiler development. Crystal clear style and language make this book easy reading, and LCC is the best non-optimizing compiler I've seen (and believe me, I've seen many compiler sources): orthogonal, easy to follow design, well-thought data structures and overall architecture.Read more

Subjects:  1. C (Computer program language)    2. C (Programming Language)    3. Compilers    4. Compilers (Computer Science)    5. Compilers (Computer programs)    6. Computer Books: Languages    7. Computers    8. Computers - Languages / Programming    9. Programming Languages - C    10. C & Visual C    11. Compilers & interpreters    12. Computers / Programming Languages / C    13. Operating systems & graphical user interfaces (GUIs)   

Subjects:  1. Compilers (Computer programs)    2. Congresses   

Reviews (1)

Agem
I've owned this book for quite some time and have always meant to write a review about it, but for one reason or another have always blown it off. The time has come, however to give full credit to good old Doc. Pyster. First off, this little book (a mere 357 pages including index,appendix,et al)concisely explains not only theoretical concerns but practical implementations as well. Pyster shows you,step by step, the implementation of a robustly featured Pascal compiler(called Rascal)using a LL(1) grammar. One of the beautiful features of this compiler description is the definition of an Expression that includes not only a leading minus sign but a plus/minus sign anywhere allowed by the conventions of Mathematics. I have a number of compiler development books(including the much cited Dragon book)and they all define expressions with optional leading minus signs (ex. -5 +3*2)but not expressions of the form(-5+-5*2). That second -5 is just not allowed for. Not so with Doc. Pyster. His CFG fully allows unary minus' anywhere that traditional mathematical analysis allows.
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Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Computer Bks - Languages / Programming    3. Programming Languages - General   

Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Computer Architecture - General    3. Computer Books: General    4. Computers    5. Computers - General Information    6. Compilers & interpreters    7. Computers / Computer Architecture    8. Systems analysis & design   

Reviews (2)

If you thought the Dragon Book was dense...
A warning to compiler practitioners: This book is heavily based on mathematics. Ideas are expressed more often as algebra and theorems than as English prose. Therefore it's more of a resource for academic work than for actually implementing a compiler. If you are looking for such a formal treatment, perhaps as the basis of a thesis, I highly recommend this book. It's similar to the Dragon Book, but is more up to date and covers topics specific to imperative, functional, logic, and OO languages. But if you're simply interested in getting a working understanding of how to implement a compiler, I suggest one of the other highly rated works on Amazon. I think the other reviewer (only 2 reviews says something too) summarized it best: authoritative, informative, and dull.

authoritative, informative, and dull.
This is a useful and highly informative text.It covers technique and structures for the efficient compilation of OO, functional, and Logic Programming Languages -- languages not well covered by the Dragon Book. The code examples are sparse, and in pseudocode.The authors present a lotof theory as mathematical formalisms -- one of the most precise andcomplete ways to do it of course, but reading it is uphill work.They alsocover technique and give reasonable discussion of the complexity of variousapproaches.The coverage of detail is absolutely superb.Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Compilers (Computer Science)    3. Compilers (Computer programs)    4. Computer Books: Operating Systems    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Programming - General    7. Programming Languages - General    8. Compilers & interpreters    9. Object-oriented programming (OOP)    10. Operating systems & graphical user interfaces (GUIs)    11. Software engineering   

Reviews (5)

Good for starters
This book gives a good synopsis of each topic, but you'll have to look elsewhere for detail. For example, when discussing the parsing alogrithms of regular expressions, only a few strategies are mentioned.

Excellent book but not for a `crash course'
The top researchers in the field give this (by now) legendary compiler book. Crisp and stimulating discussions of the various phases of compilers. A major disadvantage is that examples & exercises are few. Whilereading the stuff on LALR parsers for the first time one feels woefullylost.... serious stuff intended for careful study - not just another bookfor perusal.

The Best Book Available on Compiler Design
The quintessential reference for anyone interested in the subject of compiler design and development. This sub-field of Computer Science forms a scientific core the theory of which is universally applicable to so manyareas of our field that every professional computer scientist and softwaredeveloper/programmer should be intimately familiar with the basic tenetsincluded: lexical analysis, parsing, optimization, symbol management, spacevs. time considerations, and especially BNF (notation for specifyinggrammars). Even if you are not a compiler developer and have no intentionof becoming one, this knowledge is so fundamental to being a good softwaredeveloper and intelligent user of compilers that no professional can affordnot to have read this book and keep it handy as a reference. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers (Computer programs)    2. Questions & Answers    3. Reference   

Editorial Review

Although Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) is one of the most widely used component standards in the computing industry, it has a well-deserved reputation for being rather difficult to master. While many tools (such as Visual Basic) let programmers use DCOM without understanding how it works, C++ and Java programmers who need to know more will want to turn to Read more

Reviews (17)

Outdated technology, but one of the best-written computer books ever

This is a *DEAD* technology
Micro$oft is famous for its ability to push out new development technologies. The reason behind this planned obsolesence is obvious, every time they come out with something new people will have to open their wallets to "keep up." Fantastic Second Book
great book for those that already know the workings of com/dcom, but want a better understanding of how things work under the hood (and way under the hood).this book is not VC++ 6.0 or ATL3.0 oriented - but you'll need to be pretty proficient in both or this is not your best use of funds.if you want the rest of the story behind marshalling, esp custom, std, and type lib, then is the best book i have found.certainly not a replacement for grimes - but certainly a notch or two above many of the WROX/Grimes products in both completeness and correctness. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Application software    2. Computer Books: Operating Systems    3. Computers    4. DCOM (Computer architecture)    5. Development    6. Distributed Computer Systems    7. Distributed processing    8. Electronic data processing    9. Management Information Systems    10. Object-Oriented Programming    11. Compilers & interpreters    12. Computer architecture & logic design   

Reviews (1)

Introductory Compiler Design
I have used this as a textbook for a compiler design course with good results. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Computer Bks - General Information    3. Reference    4. Compilers & interpreters    5. Operating systems & graphical user interfaces (GUIs)   

Reviews (2)

Good Reference
If you are doing a J2EE or JSP project, XMLC is worthy of consideration as an alternative to JSP.It works with any Java app server.Unlike JSP, it perfectly cleanly separates the View of a Model/View/Controller architecture. Comprehensive and exceptionally well organized
David Young's Enhydra XMLC Application Development presents XMLC development by first outlining the advantages of XMLC and the Enhydra platform. Then Young introduces progressively more complex development scenarios using XMLC and illustrates each topic with working examples. Enhydra XMLC Application Development is comprehensive, exceptionally well organized, and an ideal instructional text and a useful, long term reference work. User Level: Intermediate-Advanced, 450 pages. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers (Computer programs)    2. Computer Books And Software    3. Computer Networks    4. Computer Programming Languages    5. Computers    6. Computers - Languages / Programming    7. Internet - Web Site Design    8. Java (Computer program language)    9. Programming Languages - General    10. Programming Languages - HTML    11. Programming Languages - XML    12. XML (Document markup language)   

Reviews (2)

great book
This book is the perfect storm of compiler theory books. Forget about the Dragon Book and pick this one up used for 10% of the "D" book's cost. Lewis et al lead you from an exploration of FSMs through PDMs(both D and ND)to CFGs,Top Down(LL(k)) and Bottom Up(LR(k)) grammars.The first 13 chapters of the book are worth the cost alone. Unlike other compiler books this one gives you a deep understanding of how to specify and develop a compiler.They don't gloss over things because they'll be using automated tools(LEX,YACC,etc.) to actually develop model compilers. You're down on "bare metal" here and you'll be the one specifying LL(1) Selection Sets or LR(1) Push Tables. The good starting point, is embracing, neat and actual.
This book is a good starting point for anyone who needs to create a compiler, parser or scanner, but didn't read anything about compiler design theory yet. This book is completely self-contained and assumes only the familiarity with programming languages and the mathematical sophistication commonly found in juniors or seniors. Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers (Computer programs)    2. Questions & Answers    3. Reference   

Reviews (2)

A good mix of programming and algorithms design
Algorithm and Algorithm design is a difficult topic to talk about or to learn.It is probably one of the most complex topics in the field of Computer Science and Mathematics, mostly due to its abstractness.Proof after proof, theory after theory, and complex mathematical expressions make the topic very difficult to grasp at times.The authors of Algorithms and Data Structures have taken this notion into account, and wrote this book in such a way that a Computer Science major student can relate popular programming and problems that we come across everyday to the notion of algorithm and complexity.The Java programming language is utilizes throughout the book, and the authors, D. Bladwin and G. W. Scragg, write pseudo-Java-code to demonstrate how, for example, various versions of the quicksort algorithm are coded.Programming is obviously not the focus of this book, but the code snippets are certainly a good teaching aid for the novice readers.
College level computer science textbook
"Algorithms and Data Structures: The Science of Computing" is designed as a second course computer science textbook for colleges.At this level most computer sciences classes tend to focus on programming and programming theory.While it does have some programming examples (all in Java), this book takes a more overall view and deals with the basics of algorithms and data structures.Why is this an important difference?I have seen a lot of bloated code over the years where a programmer writes a hundred or more lines of code to do something that a couple of lines could do if they only had a better understanding of algorithms.This course gives you the conceptual knowledge you need to be able to adapt to other computer languages and coding techniques as they are developed.Read more

Subjects:  1. Compilers    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Science    4. Computer algorithms    5. Computers    6. Computers - General Information    7. Data Modeling & Design    8. Data structures (Computer scie    9. Data structures (Computer science)    10. Art / Graphic Arts    11. Computer Programming    12. General Theory of Computing