Compiler Design Books

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (2nd Edition)

Alfred V. Aho, Monica S. Lam, Ravi Sethi, Jeffrey D. Ullman

Amazon Price: $84.80 List Price: $106.00 By: Addison Wesley Amazon Marketplace: 29 new & used starting at $64.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> Computer Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Design & Architecture
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compiler Design

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Warmed over ghost of past excellence 3 out of 5 stars.
29 of 31 people found this review helpful.

I spent some serious quality time with the first edition (the "red dragon book"), in three main episodes over the past dozen years: 1) undergraduate compilers class, 2) industry project, and 3) parser generator implementation. During all three episodes, I was disappointed in various ways, though there is no denying that the book contains a wealth of information. As an undergraduate, I found the book somewhat impenetrable. When in industry, I found the book too abstract. When implementing a parser generator, I discovered that the book excludes important research results with regard to LR parser generation. It is the last disappointment that I will focus on.

The book presents parser generation in layers of increasing complexity, from SLR to LR to LALR, where LALR is presented as the penultimate algorithm, though LALR parsers can only handle a subset of the grammars that LR can handle. The justification for this is that the original Knuth LR algorithm is intractable for large grammars. However, an efficient, fully correct, approach for LR parser generation was published in 1977, and on top of that it appears easier to implement than efficient LALR parser generation! The red dragon book's original authors simply cannot have been unaware of this research result, but I suspect that they elected to warm over the "green dragon book" (published in 1977) rather than incorporate the state of the art as of 1986 into the "red dragon book". Now here we are another 20 years later, and as near as I can tell from reading through available online information, the "purple dragon book" is perpetuating this omission. The result of the red dragon book is that we have an entire generation of computer scientists who have been mislead to think that LALR is somehow superior to LR, and the purple dragon book is setting things up for yet another generation to be mislead.

Editorial Review:

This book provides the foundation for understanding the theory and pracitce of compilers. Revised and updated, it reflects the current state of compilation. Every chapter has been completely revised to reflect developments in software engineering, programming languages, and computer architecture that have occurred since 1986, when the last edition published. The authors, recognizing that few readers will ever go on to construct a compiler, retain their focus on the broader set of problems faced in software design and software development. Computer scientists, developers, and aspiring students that want to learn how to build, maintain, and execute a compiler for a major programming language.

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, & Tools with Gradiance (pkg) (2nd Edition)

Alfred V. Aho, Monica S. Lam, Ravi Sethi, Jeffrey D. Ullman

Amazon Price: $88.32 List Price: $110.40 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Addison Wesley Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $84.96

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> Computer Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Design & Architecture

Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation

Steven Muchnick

Amazon Price: $95.20 List Price: $119.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Morgan Kaufmann Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $49.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compiler Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compilers
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Software Design, Testing & Engineering -> Software Development

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good for seasoned compiler writers, bad for CS students 1 out of 5 stars.
20 of 41 people found this review helpful.

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.

However, for learning the concepts, it is a very bad material. At the end you end up confused under a pile of thousands of lines of pseudocode in a weird notation (invented by the author) called "I CAN" (yes you can write a very bad book Mr. Muchnick) instead of reading useful explanations of the topics. The author also assumes that you already know some concepts and that's why he does not explain them as he should. If you want to really understand this book, first review Chapter 10 of the Dragon Book. I thought that the Dragon book was not so good because you have to re read some things in order to fully understand, but with Muchnick's book that is not always possible.

You can also take a look at Morgan's book (unfortunately, out of print) or just read the papers (as the first reviewer suggested). This book is not enough, and sadly, a lot of "teachers" think of it as a kind of "bible" and as a very bad excuse to teach very poorly. Some of them even don't master all the concepts presented there and have to use other books (their "dirty little secret") but they don't tell you which ones and continue praising this bad piece of work. If you are a CS student who really wants to learn, be warned that this book is not for you (it has at least three erratas and still has errors!)

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. Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation presents a comprehensive and technically up-to-date look at design of real-world compilers for CISC- and RISC-based uni-processor architectures. The author led the advanced compiler design and implementation teams for both Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC and Sun Microsystems's SPARC processors.

Principles of Program Analysis

Flemming Nielson, Hanne R. Nielson, Chris Hankin

Amazon Price: $55.96 List Price: $69.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Springer Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $39.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compiler Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compilers
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Software Design, Testing & Engineering -> Software Development

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Interesting 4 out of 5 stars.
25 of 27 people found this review helpful.

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.

I rate it as 4 star as it gives the information on how to approach program analysis from the theoretical side. Also, reading it made my life easy when working with some code on flow analysis. I would say it definitely requires 2 readings for the info to settle inside. The appendix on Partially Ordered Sets is much more comprehendable than in Winskel.

In simple words, if u r good at theoritcal math used with languages and are interested in implementing and understanding various analysis that can be performed on programs then this is book would be a great aid.

Editorial Review:

Program analysis concerns static techniques for computing reliable approximate information about the dynamic behaviour of programs. Applications include compilers (for code improvement), software validation (for detecting errors in algorithms or breaches of security) and transformations between data representation (for solving problems such as the Y2K problem). This book is unique in giving an overview of the four major approaches to program analysis: data flow analysis, constraint based analysis, abstract interpretation, and type and effect systems. The presentation demonstrates the extensive similarities between the approaches; this will aid the reader in choosing the right approach and in enhancing it with insights from the other approaches. The book covers basic semantic properties as well as more advanced algorithmic techniques. The book is aimed at M.Sc. and Ph.D. students but will be valuable also for experienced researchers and professionals.

Compiler Design in C (Prentice-Hall Software Series)

Allen I. Holub

List Price: $87.00 By: Prentice-Hall Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $3.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> C -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compiler Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compilers

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Don't hesitate to buy this one: you won't be sorry!! 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

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 were used I turned to Holub's book. The book is extremely well organized. If you want the theory its all there and if you want to just look at code its all there too: thousands of lines of it! After explaining everything you actually get to see how lex and yacc are built (from the ground up) and finally a C compiler. BUY IT NOW!!

Excellent! Very practical and useful 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

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 writing business. This book is perfect for me.

Just Fantastic 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

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.

A Retargetable C Compiler: Design and Implementation

David R. Hanson, Christopher W. Fraser

Amazon Price: $55.99 List Price: $69.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Addison-Wesley Professional Amazon Marketplace: 30 new & used starting at $23.93

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> C -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compiler Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compilers

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

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.

I treat this book as a perfect collection of brilliant ideas, many of which you will find implemented in most commercial compilers.

Whether it helps to write your own compiler? -- sure. Are you thinking about IR (internal representation) that will be easy to create and, most important, walk through and manipulate? -- take a look how Fraser et al did it; they did it well. Think how to write a front end or code generator? -- it's all there. Sure, blind copying won't work -- optimizing compiler will call for way more sophisticated BURG-like technique (one of the best known code generation techniques by now), but, all in all, it'll be BURG-like, and it's in the book as well.

So, if you want to show your students (or learn yourself) how compilers should be written, you cannot find anything better than LCC accompanied by this book. Fraser's team did it right.

Editorial Review:

This new book examines the implementation of lcc, a production-quality, research-oriented retargetable compiler, designed for the ANSI C programming language. The author's innovative approach uses a line-by-line explanation of the code to demonstrate how lcc is built. Accompanying disk contains the full source code for the Icc compiler, the back ends, and the code-generator.

Principles of Compiler Design (Addison-Wesley series in computer science and information processing)

Alfred V. Aho, Jeffrey D. Ullman

List Price: $42.45 By: Addison-Wesley Amazon Marketplace: 27 new & used starting at $0.57

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compiler Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compilers
Subjects -> Reference -> Education -> Questions & Answers

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

One of the few really good books 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

It is really a great book, especially for self study. Unlike newer variations on the same theme that are more concerned with stuffing a book with something that makes the table of contents look attractive, this one really covers things in detail. Very well written too. Books like that re-kindle the '...love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigour from enjoyment...' as Gibbon put it. Makes you suddenly recall why you still are in this damn profession. Keep it handy--for psychological reasons, to be used in moments of Microsoft "technologies" triggered developmental distress.

They used to write good books (tm)

The Best Book Available on Compiler Design 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

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 many areas of our field that every professional computer scientist and software developer/programmer should be intimately familiar with the basic tenets included: lexical analysis, parsing, optimization, symbol management, space vs. time considerations, and especially BNF (notation for specifying grammars). Even if you are not a compiler developer and have no intention of becoming one, this knowledge is so fundamental to being a good software developer and intelligent user of compilers that no professional can afford not to have read this book and keep it handy as a reference.

The Compiler Design Handbook: Optimizations and Machine Code Generation, Second Edition

Amazon Price: $100.76 List Price: $139.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: CRC Amazon Marketplace: 22 new & used starting at $94.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compiler Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compilers
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> General

Editorial Review:

Today’s embedded devices and sensor networks are becoming more and more sophisticated, requiring more efficient and highly flexible compilers. Engineers are discovering that many of the compilers in use today are ill-suited to meet the demands of more advanced computer architectures.

Updated to include the latest techniques, The Compiler Design Handbook, Second Edition offers a unique opportunity for designers and researchers to update their knowledge, refine their skills, and prepare for emerging innovations. The completely revised handbook includes 14 new chapters addressing topics such as worst case execution time estimation, garbage collection, and energy aware compilation. The editors take special care to consider the growing proliferation of embedded devices, as well as the need for efficient techniques to debug faulty code. New contributors provide additional insight to chapters on register allocation, software pipelining, instruction scheduling, and type systems.

Written bytop researchers and designers from around the world, The Compiler Design Handbook, Second Edition gives designers the opportunity to incorporate and develop innovative techniques for optimization and code generation.

Writing Scientific Software: A Guide to Good Style

Suely Oliveira, David E. Stewart

Amazon Price: $29.89 List Price: $37.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Cambridge University Press Amazon Marketplace: 29 new & used starting at $5.64

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> Computer Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Design & Architecture
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compiler Design

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A top pick for college libraries. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Writing Scientific Software: A Guide to Good Style provides college-level audiences studying computer technical writing with a clear guide to writing numerical software. Tips are geared to real-world challenges and scenarios and include plenty of examples, so students learn how to write efficient, workable software, test it for bugs and performance, and more. Examples are provided in Fortran 90, C++ and Java throughout and offer plenty of detail on common scenarios, pitfalls, and the elements of sold scientific software production. A top pick for college libraries.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Editorial Review:

The core of scientific computing is designing, writing, testing, debugging and modifying numerical software for application to a vast range of areas: from graphics, meteorology and chemistry to engineering, biology and finance. Scientists, engineers and computer scientists need to write good code, for speed, clarity, flexibility and ease of re-use. Oliveira and Stewart's style guide for numerical software points out good practices to follow, and pitfalls to avoid. By following their advice, readers will learn how to write efficient software, and how to test it for bugs, accuracy and performance. Techniques are explained with a variety of programming languages, and illustrated with two extensive design examples, one in Fortran 90 and one in C++: other examples in C, C++, Fortran 90 and Java are scattered throughout the book. This manual of scientific computing style will be an essential addition to the bookshelf and lab of everyone who writes numerical software.

The Art of Compiler Design: Theory and Practice

Thomas Pittman, James Peters

List Price: $80.00 By: Prentice Hall Amazon Marketplace: 18 new & used starting at $20.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> Computer Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Design & Architecture
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Compiler Design

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Concerning Tom Pittman 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 28 people found this review helpful.

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 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 22 people found this review helpful.

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 and specialists who interested in compilers architecture.

very good book 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

As a teacher in Brazil I adopt this book in my classes. This book is the one of the best on compiler design. I also use the "Dragin Book" among others.