Programming Language Concepts

This book uses a functional programming language (F#) as a metalanguage to present all concepts and examples, and thus has an operational flavour, enabling practical experiments and exercises. It includes basic concepts such as abstract syntax, interpretation, stack machines, compilation, type checking, garbage collection, and real machine code. Also included are more advanced topics on polymorphic types, type inference using unification, co- and contravariant types, continuations, and backwards code generation with on-the-fly peephole optimization. This second edition includes two new chapters. One describes compilation and type checking of a full functional language, tying together the previous chapters. The other describes how to compile a C subset to real (x86) hardware, as a smooth extension of the previously presented compilers.The examples present several interpreters and compilers for toy languages, including compilers for a small but usable subset of C, abstract machines, a garbage collector, and ML-style polymorphic type inference. Each chapter has exercises. Programming Language Concepts covers practical construction of lexers and parsers, but not regular expressions, automata and grammars, which are well covered already. It discusses the design and technology of Java and C# to strengthen students’ understanding of these widely used languages.

A comprehensive undergraduate textbook covering both theory and practical design issues, with an emphasis on object-oriented languages.

Programming Languages: Concepts and Implementation teaches language concepts from two complementary perspectives: implementation and paradigms. It covers the implementation of concepts through the incremental construction of a progressive series of interpreters in Python, and Racket Scheme, for purposes of its combined simplicity and power, and assessing the differences in the resulting languages.

1. Introduction 2. Syntax 3. Operational semantics 4. Denotational semantics 5. Fixed points 6. FL: a functional language 7. Naming 8. State 9. Control 10. Data 11. Simple types 12. Polymorphism and higher-order types 13. Type reconstruction 14. Abstract types 15. Modules 16. Effects describe progran behavior 17. Compilation 18. Garbage collection.

Software -- Programming Techniques.

Explains the concepts underlying programming languages, and demonstrates how these concepts are synthesized in the major paradigms: imperative, OO, concurrent, functional, logic and with recent scripting languages. It gives greatest prominence to the OO paradigm. Includes numerous examples using C, Java and C++ as exmplar languages Additional case-study languages: Python, Haskell, Prolog and Ada Extensive end-of-chapter exercises with sample solutions on the companion Web site Deepens study by examining the motivation of programming languages not just their features

Despite using them every day, most software engineers know little about how programming languages are designed and implemented. For many, their only experience with that corner of computer science was a terrifying "compilers" class that they suffered through in undergrad and tried to blot from their memory as soon as they had scribbled their last NFA to DFA conversion on the final exam. That fearsome reputation belies a field that is rich with useful techniques and not so difficult as some of its practitioners might have you believe. A better understanding of how programming languages are built will make you a stronger software engineer and teach you concepts and data structures you'll use the rest of your coding days. You might even have fun. This book teaches you everything you need to know to implement a full-featured, efficient scripting language. You'll learn both high-level concepts around parsing and semantics and gritty details like bytecode representation and garbage collection. Your brain will light up with new ideas, and your hands will get dirty and calloused. Starting from main(), you will build a language that features rich syntax, dynamic typing, garbage collection, lexical scope, first-class functions, closures, classes, and inheritance. All packed into a few thousand lines of clean, fast code that you thoroughly understand because you wrote each one yourself.