bby@palladium.UUCP (Bob Mastors) (05/25/90)
Following is a summary of responses. The original question was: > Has anyone read "Crafting a Compiler" by Fischer and LeBlanc? > Is it worth $46 considering I already have the dragon book? These are the responses mailed to me, not the ones posted to comp.lang.c. --------- It's a good book, less theory, more understandable/practical than the dragon book. Depends how much $46 is for you... :-) --------- Yes. I have both the red dragon book and "Crafting a Compiler". Crafting is slightly more recent (1988 vs. 1986) and is written from a decidedly ADA-like perspective. It is an excellent book and well worth the investment. Crafting is written with a slightly more "practical" persepective than the more theoretical dragon book. That is not to say that it does not go into the theory of parsing, automata, code generation, etc. --------- Yup. It's the first compiler book I bought that actually showed me the nuts-and-bolts of writing a compiler. It shows you in ADA-like psuedo-code exactly what you need; from declarations to actual code. Very good book. Glad I bought it. --------- I liked both of them. crafting gives Ada style psuedo code which has a lot of boiler plate though. A. Holub's new book is a better buy -- done with real C. --------- It is quite a good book; I believe it is somewhat more practically oriented than the dragon book. It also is easier to carry. :-) --------- We used it as the main text for our compiler course a couple of years ago, which I TA'ed, with the dragon book as a secondary reference. It is excellent, and gives information about actual implementation techniques that the dragon book glosses over. --------- Thanks to all who responded. Bob --- Bob Mastors Epoch Systems, Westboro MA (508) 836-4711 x317 (voice) (508) 836-4884 (fax) harvard!cfisun!palladium!mastors linus!alliant!palladium!mastors