Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

stefanrusek@hotmail.com (Stefan Rusek) — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 06:16:00 GMT

Awesome!

I just have one question. Are you releasing it into the public domain, or are you releasing it under some certain license. I would suggest public domain, BSD or MT licenses.

re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

David Smith — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 06:24:00 GMT

I appreciate this.

re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Mike Stall — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 06:38:00 GMT

This is in the public domain. Go wild. If you do anything interesting with it, let me know.

re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Nick Parker — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 07:10:00 GMT

Nice job Mike, thanks!

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Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

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Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

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re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Barry Kelly — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 17:02:00 GMT

I know you aren't citing this as the canonical example of how to write a compiler, but I have to make one suggestion (maybe others will be interested):

In factoring the expression grammar to permit recursive descent parsing, you've broken up the productions into halves, but are left with the problem that it creates trees the wrong way around, so in order to get around that you pass the left part to the recursive routine (the other half of the broken up production) (I hope I didn't get that too wrong, I've only looked at the code for 5 minutes).

There is an easier way: that is, don't use recursion for same-precedence-level expressions, and instead use iteration.

Thus, for a simple grammar that looks like this:

E ::= T (('+'|'-') T)*
T ::= F (('*'|'/') F)*
F ::= <ident> | <const> // etc...

One can code E, T, F, like the following (in pseudocode, indentation indicates blocks, with Pascal-style set expressions, case statements implicitly end in break; I don't know how the formatting is going to end up with this):

function E(skip: bool) : Exp
Exp result = T(skip)
while true
switch (PeekToken())
case '+': result = new Add(result, T(true));
case '-': result = new Sub(result, T(true));
default: break loop;
return result;

function T(skip: bool) : Exp
Exp result = F(skip)
while true
switch (PeekToken())
case '*': result = new Mul(result, F(true));
case '/': result = new Div(result, F(true));
default: break loop;
return result;

function F(skip: bool) : Exp
if (skip)
NextToken();
switch (PeekToken())
<const>: return new Const(<constValue>);
<ident>: return new VarOrFuncEtc(<ident>);
default: throw new Error("Expected a factor");

re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Mike Stall — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 18:40:00 GMT

Barry - thanks for the suggestion - that's a good point. It's like inlining tail recursion.

I think you're right about the recursion. On a historical note - I was actually creating the trees backwards for a while. I didn't notice it until I tried to dogfood it, and then applied the quick fix you observed.

It's also very true that this is definitely not a model compiler example. That's actually why I decided to just release it as a private sample and not put it on MSDN. We believed that if we put it on MSDN, that people we interpret that as Microsoft's official blessing that this was the way to write compilers; when in reality, this is just a glorified reflection-emit demo.

link

TrackBack — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 22:35:00 GMT

link

C# Compiler painted in Blue.

Erick Sgarbi's Blog — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 01:00:00 GMT

re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Erick Sgarbi — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 01:02:00 GMT

http://blog.csharpbox.com/default.aspx#ae043b654-9502-4077-9925-95d1c71f1b01

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re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Javier G. Lozano — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 18:15:00 GMT

This is sweet! I've been trying to look for an example besides the ones that come with the fx SDK, this is the best one! Thanks for posting this Mike!

sourceforge project

Dan Vanderboom — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 18:25:00 GMT

Any interest in making a sourceforge project out of this and getting some collaboration going to put some polish on it?

re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Mike Stall — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 20:02:00 GMT

Dan - that's a great idea and several people have given me that suggestion. I'd like to do it and am following up with it. If I can get it, I'll certainly post back here to announce it.

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Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Divino — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 11:23:00 GMT

re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

sandeep — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 11:09:00 GMT

Can you provide us some sample applications developed using BLUE.

It will be really helpful if we get some script files of all the features so that we can do the R&D on the compiler.

re: Source for a C# compiler written in pure C#.

Mike Stall — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 19:16:00 GMT

Sandeep - there's not really any sample applications since Blue's not a production quality compiler. Blue dogfoods itself, but certainly wasn't developed with itself.

However, I do have about 100 unit tests for Blue. I'll try to get those up.

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