Transpilers

I now use Ohm-JS to define small transpilers and used a toolbox language, like Common Lisp, Javascript, etc., to do all of the heavy lifting for me.

I don’t write code to implement scanners. I use PEG (I used to used regular expressions).

I don’t write code to implement parsers. I use PEG1.

I don’t write code to do syntax-checking. I use a parser.

I don’t write code to implement semantics checking. I use the underlying toolbox language to do most of the work for me (e.g. hash tables, etc.2).

I don’t write code to implement code emission. I transpile3 to some base language, e.g. JavaScript, and let the corresponding compiler do the work for me.

I don’t write code to implement code optimization. I transpile to some base language and let the corresponding compiler do the work for me.

See Also

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  1. I like the Ohm language (based on PEG). I regularly use Ohm-JS and Ohm-Editor. ↩

  2. Semantic analysis (type checking) consists, at a base level, of storing some information and retrieving that information. More complicated type checking consists of inferring type information, which, itself, decomposes into two broad categories - (1) what to infer, and, (2) how to infer it. Akin to the use of end if -like constructs in parsing, there are some simple - low-hanging-fruit - type checks that can be performed fairly easily with information stored in tables. ↩

  3. Transpilation is source-to-source compilation. Compile one source language to another textual language. ↩