arnold@audiofax.com (Arnold Robbins) (11/16/90)
This note is to let the world know that Benjamin Cummings will shortly
be publishing the C edition of "Crafting A Compiler", entitled
"Crafting A Compiler With C", by Charles Fischer and Richard LeBlanc.
The ISBN will be 0-8053-2166-7.
Those who are familiar with the book will find that it has not changed
radically. Some things have changed, though.
+ The examples, data structures, and algorithms are now in
C and C-ish psuedo-code, as opposed to the original Ada.
+ The chapter on lexing has been updated to reflect the work
by Jacobsen and Paxson indicating that machine built scanners
aren't by nature slow. Flex is referred to explicitly.
+ The chapters describing grammar analysis now have their
algorithms presented in a much more "concrete" style.
+ GCC gets mentioned in a few places as an example of a highly
retargetable multi-stage compiler.
+ Where particular techniques are relevant for C and C++, this
is now mentioned.
+ The prose has been revised in a lot of places to read more easily.
However, this is not a second edition; this revision is comparable to the
differences between, say, the original "Software Tools" and "Software
Tools in Pascal". It is essentially the same book, updated for C.
I did the work to translate the Ada into C, which is the majority of
the content revision. In doing so, I really *read* the book closely,
every single word. Even though I'd read the book when it was first being
written, I discovered just how good a book it is --- where the dragon
book usually draws pictures, CAC gives you actual, usable (for the most
part) data structures. The prose has also been revised a lot to make it
easier to read (and/or to set the type :-) --- this part of the revision
was done by Fischer and LeBlanc, after I finished the changes for C.
I also found a large number of typos (and an occasional bug) in the
original Ada; if Bemjamin Cummings does another printing of the Ada
edition, then those should be factored in.
At the time of this writing, I don't have the precise date of availability.
However, this isn't vaporware; the book will be published by the end of the
year and should be in bookstores by early January.
--
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