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"Stack discipline is not a compiler thing, but an Algol thing."

That's an absurd statement. That's like saying "text" is simply one representation of a program. While technically true, it covers a wide enough portion of the space that its interesting to anyone writing real programs.

Furthermore, I'd say it has more to do with what you're targeting, rather than the source language. In any case, it captures such a wide space, it's naive to think that it's just a detail.

And I'm not sure what compilers you've written, but modern compilers... even less modern compilers, like gcc, use IRs for more than simply that -- unless your definition for binding is exceptionally wide. And even the most primitive compilers use the IR for control flow. Some use it for modeling all possible control flow. Others to capture data flow.

Unless your goal is to write an HP 48S calculator or reimplement Scheme, I think you'll need a fair bit more than SICP.




What stack discipline would you use for translating business rules written in pseudo-English sentences to prolog?

Compiler construction != native machine code generation.


I don't know Prolog very well, and I don't know what this pseudo language structure is like. But one place where you will often see stacks even when compiling down to languages where you think you needn't use it is for handling exceptional and failures, e.g., OOM.

At a lower-level, function composition is a form of stack discipline, where ordering is important, but placement less so.

In any case, I'm sure you can write a compiler that translates from X to Y, for some X and for some Y, using only Tic-Tac-Toe as your language, with readings from the back of Lucky Charms as the totality of your knowledge base. My point was that to really know compilers, you need to know a bit more than that.


I actually agree with you that SICP doesn't cover all of compiler construction; but that point didn't need to be made, because not even the book claims to be that.

What it is is a gateway drug to serious computing, including compiler construction.

However, let me just come back to your point that stack discipline is necessary for control structures and non-local transfer of control.

Well, that depends on the execution model of the machine, and I would say explicit stacks are a performance hack, made to model the mathematical concepts of closure and application.

--

Sorry, I had to remove my wordy examples explaining "Scope and Extent", and how they can be represented with environment pointers, and heap allocated activation records.

TODO: Point yet again to the "3 Implementations of Scheme" paper, Scheme being the cleanest Algol variant this side of modern computing.

Then I found this:

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pjj/cs211/ho/node14.html


Well I think we both agree that SICP is a gateway drug to many good things. I routinely recommend it as the single best CS text. I don't recommend it as the single best compiler text, where I'd recommend the Dragon book or even Simon Peyton Jones's text, if that is more to your liking.

I was reacting to this statement you made, "Few chapters of a Lisp book will spare you volumes of traditional compiler construction techniques".


Yes, the Dragon text wasn't very much to my liking. You may be able to implement a C compiler with it. But nothing really interesting. And it's approach is rather pedestrian.

S. P. Jones' text was more interesting. I also like "Modern Compiler Design" (http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/MCD.html), which covers imperative/oop programs as well as logical and functional paradigms.




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