> Jack Crenshaw's tutorial takes the syntax-directed translation approach, where code is emitted while parsing, without having to divide the compiler into explicit phases with IRs.
Is "syntax-directed translation" just another term for a single-pass compiler, e.g. as used by Lua (albeit to generate bytecode instead of assembly / machine code)? Or is it something more specific?
> in the latter parts of the tutorial it starts showing its limitations. Especially once we get to types [...] it's easy to generate working code; it's just not easy to generate optimal code
So, using a single-pass compiler for a statically-typed language makes it difficult to apply type-based optimizations. (Of course, Lua sidesteps this problem because the language is dynamically typed.)
Are there any other downsides? Does single-pass compilation also restrict the level of type checking that can be performed?
Is "syntax-directed translation" just another term for a single-pass compiler, e.g. as used by Lua (albeit to generate bytecode instead of assembly / machine code)? Or is it something more specific?
> in the latter parts of the tutorial it starts showing its limitations. Especially once we get to types [...] it's easy to generate working code; it's just not easy to generate optimal code
So, using a single-pass compiler for a statically-typed language makes it difficult to apply type-based optimizations. (Of course, Lua sidesteps this problem because the language is dynamically typed.)
Are there any other downsides? Does single-pass compilation also restrict the level of type checking that can be performed?