A compiler for teaching about compilers

Abstract

Projects in which students write a small compiler are common in compiler design courses, but even a small compiler can be daunting to students with no prior compiler-writing experience. When I recently taught compiler design, I developed a very small language with a highly modular compiler, focusing the project on implementing the core parts of a compiler without requiring students to build all the infrastructure from scratch. This paper describes the language and its compiler, and their successes (and occasional limitations) for teaching compiler design.