Understanding and Writing Compilers

Abstract

Preface to the online edition I wrote this book on compiling in the late 1970s. It was a success. I still meet people who learnt about compiling from it. I get three or four requests a year from people who'd like a copy. I used to tell them to use Abebooks.com, but now there aren't any copies even there. Since I own the copyright (thanks to Macmillan), I can publish it again, for free. For a while I tried to reproduce the original book from the original nroff source, but Unix version 6 nroff is long dead, and the printer-driver hacks that made bold and underlining work are even deader. So I hacked it into L A T E X, and here it is. I fixed the errors that I knew about, changed a very few infelicities, and otherwise tried to change as little as possible.