Customer Reviews
Hard Stuff - By: , 18 Oct 2000 
This book is compulsory for our course Compiling Techniques, Computer Science, University of Edinburgh. It really follows from CS2 (old syllabus) "Grammers", "Finite Automata", etc etc. If you love doing those DFA conversions, solving regular expressions, etc then you'll love this course (and book).
On the other hand, this book/course also enthasizes those dreaded CS2A ML Practicals that everyone hated so much. It is easier writingin ML but more complicated & you have to think harder. If you hated those CS2A ML practicals, so much that it has mentally scarred you with "wanting to kill the person who invented ML", then avoid this book.
This book is quite easy to follow. It guides you through on how to write a compiler for the Tiger '99 language (whatever that is). Though I hate those homework assignments at the end of each chapter.
Reasonably clear and well written. - By: , 20 Jan 2000 
For the most, the book is easy to follow. I haven't worked through the examples or exercises, but they seem coherent with the content, & should fit the bill for a course on compilers.
My biggest gripe is that the content is biased toward ML style languages. The chapters on garbage collection & polymorphism are clearly where the author's research interests lie. There could have been more on C++in particular & perhaps also Ada & Eiffel.
