General Purpose Language to build a compiler for

Question

Inspired by Eric Sink's interview on the stackoverflow podcast I would like to build a full compiler in my spare time for the learning experience. My initial thought was to build a C compiler but I'm not sure whether it would take too much time.

I am wondering if there is a smaller general purpose language that would be more appropriate to implement as a first compiler effort? Or is a C implementation doable on a reasonable timescale (200 hrs)?

It is my intention to target the CLR.

Answer 1

You'll be happiest writing compilers for older, smaller languages. Pascal, for example, were designed as learning tools. The Pascal language is small and elegant; the compiler can be written fairly simply.

Even an Oberon or Modula-2 compiler is similar in complexity to Pascal; their design was driven by the same person, Niklaus Wirth.

Languages like C, which evolved organically, are too full of quirks to be good learning experiences.

Answer 2

Write a Scheme compiler.

See: An incremental approach to compiler construction