Talk:Compiler

duplication

the "types of compilers" section is a duplication of text at the very top of the page.

Correct focus in compliance of the page's title expectations.

The page is called Compiler but the whole focus of it is about the programming languages and not on the compilers, in fact you learn barely anything (mostly basic stuff) about the compilers themselves, most of them are even hidden inside the programming language sentences, implied, but completely silent about the compilers. I wonder if anyone would agree this should be addressed and fixed, I lack the knowledge to do so, which is why I came to the page on the first place.

Thank you very much, i hope this isn't uncalled for. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.39.192.31 (talk) 14:17, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

You can't really separate the idea of a compiler from the idea of a language needing compiling. Also, many details will be too esoteric for an article. Still, it might be that some things could be done better. Gah4 (talk) 19:35, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

highlighting them in the source code

There is a dubious/discuss for highlighting them in the source code. At first I also thought it was dubious, the way it sounds, but compilers from the 1960's and 1970's would normally (optionally) print out a source listing, with error messages at the appropriate point. Then usually with an indication of where in the line the error was, as well as it was known, sometimes with an arrow pointing at the position. I would consider that highlighting. Some GUI compilers might actually highlight with color or font, or otherwise make obvious in the source. Some now just indicate the line number, and usually where in the line, which is a less obvious definition of highlight. Gah4 (talk) 18:09, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

I can see both sides of this. I'm sure it's true that some compilers out there do some kind of highlighting of the source code. However, I would expect an encyclopedia article describing the different stages of the compiler to describe what they fundamentally and generally do, rather than what all the possibilities are. The next sentence, which notes that the front-end performs lexical, syntactic, and semantic analysis is much more true to the spirit of what this component does, and that's the thing to focus on. Unless there's further discussion of this in the near future I'll edit this out. Rm9820 (talk) 14:28, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Section with verifiability issues moved from article

The following section was moved from the article because I couldn't find sufficient information to verify it fully.

Compilers in education

Compiler construction and compiler optimization are taught at universities and schools as part of a computer science curriculum. Such courses are usually supplemented with the implementation of a compiler for an educational programming language. A well-documented example is Niklaus Wirth's PL/0 compiler, which Wirth used to teach compiler construction in the 1970s. In spite of its simplicity, the PL/0 compiler introduced several influential concepts to the field, including uses of:

1. akin to the 1971 paper by Wirth, program development by stepwise refinement;
2. a recursive descent parser;
3. an extended Backus–Naur form (EBNF) to specify the syntax of a language;
4. a code generator producing portable P-code; and
5. tombstone diagrams in the formal description of the bootstrapping problem.

References

Feel free to reinstate it if sources are found. Enterprisey (talk!) 21:42, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

If you want to find out if it is taught in universities, a look through the catalog of two of them (since it is plural) should be enough. Those catalogs could even be references. Also, the existence of textbooks for such courses is a strong hint that courses exist, and could also be references. Gah4 (talk) 19:39, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

translators

There are computer language translators that are not compilers. Specifically, that don't fully parse the source language. When given invalid input, they tend to produce invalid output, possibly unrecognizable, without any error messages. This used to be commonly done with macro processors, that would read a file of macros and apply them to the input. One language that does still work this was is TeX. Gah4 (talk) 23:54, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

A macro processor is clearly a type of compiler; the input is written in macro language, the output is a different language. GliderMaven (talk) 00:33, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

I suppose so, but I tend to make a distinction between ones that actually parse the input, vs. simple, or slightly less than simple, string substitution. But yes, there are macro processors that do complex parsing. Otherwise, you could call sed a compiler, which most people don't. Otherwise, there are macro-processors that can fully parse the input. Gah4 (talk) 07:41, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Sed, in and of itself, doesn't specifically perform a translation, although some sed commands might be considered to be extremely simple compilers. GliderMaven (talk) 15:58, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Primary Sources??

I see this article tagged as "depending too much on primary sources". What on earth would be "primary sources" for such a broad term as "compiler"? I'd guess the person who tagged the article didn't have an understanding what "primary source" means. As I don't really see an explanation why the article was tagged, I'd say the tag should be removed. Comments anyone? --Arny (talk) 15:49, 4 May 2019 (UTC)