<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;">[While walking 5 miles through the snow …]<br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfMessage"><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Mar 9, 2025, at 9:03 PM, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">> everyone should write for their first compiler in Pascal for a<br>> simple language and no cheating using YACC. You need to write the whole<br>> thing if you want to understand how parsing really works.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div>Yacc certainly makes it easier to write parsers for big grammars, but it's far from cheating. You need to know a lot more about parsing to use Yacc than you need to roll your own. </div><div><br></div><div>Hand parsing of a tiny grammar is almost a necessary step on the way to understanding Yacc. But I think hand-building the whole parser for a compiler is unnecessary torture--like doing trigonometry with log tables.</div><div><br></div><div>Doug</div></div></div></div></div></div>
</div></blockquote><br></div><div>In 1971 compiler construction course at UT-Austin, we had to use CDC Fortran to build a compiler for a subset of Algol 60. Undergraduates used punch cards and RJE to the 6600/6400 shared by all but the privleged few.</div><div><br></div><div>Charlie</div><br><div>
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