Writing a C Compiler

A hands-on, example-filled guide to the theory and practice of writing a C compiler: a computer program that translates code written by programmers into code the computer can read.

A comprehensive, hands-on tutorial to writing a C compiler: a computer program that translates code written by the programmer into code the computer can understand. By building a compiler, readers will gain invaluable knowledge about how programming languages work; knowledge that will make them better programmers. Readers are gently led step-by-step to build a small working compiler and will develop throughout the book. Writing a C Compiler offers readers an accessible, practical approach to this complex and often overly theoretical topic.

About the Author

Nora Sandler is a software engineer. After graduating from the University of Chicago, she worked as a penetration tester at Security Innovation, and then as a compiler developer at CrowdStrike, fuelling her interest and research into how computers work under the hood. Sandler writes C Compiler tutorials and has created test programs on her popular blog (https://norasandler.com/) to make writing a C compiler more accessible.

Table of contents

Introduction

Part I: The Basics

1. Introduction to Compilers

2. Returning an Integer

3. Unary Operators

4. Binary Operators

5. Logical and Relational Operators

6. Local Variables

7. If Statements and Conditional Expressions

8. Compound Statements

9. Loops

10. Functions

11. Static Variables

Part II: Implementing Types

12. Long Integers

13. Unsigned Integers

14. Floating-point numbers

15. Pointers

16. Arrays and Pointer Arithmetic

17. Characters and Strings

18. Supporting Dynamic Memory Allocation

19. Structures

Part III: Optimizations

20. Optimizing TACKY Programs

21. Register Allocation