Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

I'm a senior Computer Science student and will be taking a course on compilers in the upcoming quarter. I was incredibly excited to see this book listed for the course, because it has a legendary status. If you watch some of the Microsoft's compiler related videos, for example, you can see this book sitting in the background in some of the videos. My school has made some poor choices with books for other courses... needless to say, I was very happy to see this one.I bought this book well ahead of time, because the subject of compilers is not an easy one. Luckily, I just completed a course on Formal Languages & Automata, so some of the things involved in the compilation process is less frightening for me than they would be otherwise. However, I knew I would have to get a good head-start to do well in class, but also to truly learn and understand the subject. This book is very well written and I've gotten far enough into it to comfortably comment on it. As far as theory-packed books are concerned, this one is top-notch. The authors made it very approachable and it doesn't feel like they're trying to bloat the content with academic nonsense in order to place themselves on a pedestal above all else. No, I can confidently say that they've done an amazing job in making it as friendly as possible. With that said, and as I've mentioned, this is not an easy topic. Unless you're exceptionally amazing at comprehending complex material through the first read-through, expect to read this book a few times. On the bright side, it's a pretty good read and you will learn a lot from it.If you have the right mindset and the necessary passion, this is the book for you. The authors have done a fantastic job and you will not regret investing time into it.

The Dragon Book, as it is affectionately named, is something of a legendary resource among programmers and computer-science students. Not only is it one of the only references on the subject of compilers as a whole, but it's very well-written and contains a huge amount of information. It considers tricky subjects like lexing and parsing in a serious theoretical way but also includes some precious code examples.Initially when I bought this book because I was nervous about the new edition. The previous 1986 edition with the quaint illustration of the red dragon was the bench-mark gold standard for compiler texts, and I was worried that the new edition (with it's digitally animated cover, which loses much of the charm of the original) would be marred by loses and compromises. That anxiety was ill-founded. The new edition is every bit as wonderful and complete as the previous version was, with valuable information updated but nothing that I can see that is lost.One small complaint I might have, and this is not something that the authors could control, is that some important new developments have been made in the world of compilers and interpreters in the past few years. Things like PEG (Packrat parsing and OMeta), parser combinators and compound grammars are all new in the front-end world, While the state of the art in interpreters and VMs is leading to things like JIT which are turning out to be of central importance in many places but which are barely mentioned in this book at all.Anyway, on balance this is an excellent book and one that is well worth buying if you're interested in compilers, interpreters, VMs or other infrastructure components like that. This is a must-read if you're interested in working on a major existing compiler project or if you would like to dabble with your own little language or language runtime.

The book is new and arrived in perfect condition. It is a great book, despite its age.

EvaPort is selling books that are not authorized for sale in the USA. On the back cover it says this edition is for the international market. The book has no opening page with an ISBN number and the like. The foot note of every Chapter says it is a reproduction of the US edition. All chapters are there.

Any serious computer scientist should at least read this book - if not own it. It covers all different aspects of a compiler and even more in relatively small space.It is not a book on how to build the best compiler or what are the best optimizations for a specific architecture. It is a really good introduction in the black art of compiler development. After reading it, you will understand a bit better how compiler writers think and how their brainchild works under the covers. You will also be able to create your own rudimentary compiler.However, it is not a guide on how to make a state-of-the-art compiler or teach you how a specific implementation came to be.Highly recommended for people that have their first experience with compilers, both in undergraduate and early graduate levels.

This is an extremely useful book if you’re interested in writing compilers, but the Kindle version is worthless due to the extremely low limit on the number of devices on which you can read it. Each time I go to read it, I get an error saying I can’t read it on the device I’m using because I have it on too many other devices. So, I have to figure out which devices I read it on earlier so I can delete it from one of those devices and then download it on the device I’m using now. It does give me the option of buying the book again for the privilidge of reading the book I already own on a different device. You need a device to read it just like you need light to read a normal book. Am I limited to the number of lamps I can use to read a hard copy? As best I can tell, the limit is two. That’s way too low. I can’t give it any more than 1 star because it’s such a nuisance to be able to use the book. That’s sad because the content is quite good.