There is a programming game that uses a mini assembler like language to code the actions of bots fighting each other. I have been thinking about writing a compiler that takes a higher-level language and spits out the assembler code. I had a good look at Bison and how people usually do this sort of thing and got depressed. As a project it started to look too much like hard work, c centric, completely structured etc etc. There was just one way to do it.

But what a project to help discover what is possible with perl. At the very core of compilers/persers/lexical analysers is a problem in text manipulation (isn't it?). It would take some perl-like text (probably using a very restricted subset of perl functionality) and output some assembler-like text.

Can anyone give me some help getting started? Any module that may give me inspiration? - I couldn't find much. Should I maybe look at perl internals? How about starting with a "wrapped" Bison and going from there? I imagine I could get lost very quickly.

Also let me know if you think it a project not suited to perl. I'll still give it a go though - at least to understand why.

Thanks for your help.

tonyday

In reply to perl as a compiler by tonyday

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