Modern Compiler Implementation in ML

Author: Andrew W. Appel
List Price: $65.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0521582741
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (13 December, 1997)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 220,247
Average Customer Rating: 2.14 out of 5

Buy now directly from Amazon.com - Purchase this book, safely and securely from the largest book dealer on the Internet, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews

Rating: 1 out of 5
Good Information Masked by Bad Editting
This book has a lot of valuable information with regard to the construction of a compiler, that fact is overshadowed by the amazingly poor editting.

This is supposedly the "first edition reprint with corrections", but it seems like the vast majority of errors are yet to be corrected.


Rating: 4 out of 5
Good, but not an introduction to either compilers or ML
Appel explains the structure of a compiler in a very clear and precise fashion, including a lot of quite modern techniques. *However* it is only clear and precise if you have a rough high-level understanding of compilers and a good knowledge of ML beforehand. (If you understand one of the two, it is an excellent book for learning the other but you will need to do some thinking for yourself.)

If you're looking to learn about compilers from the very beginning, buy something else (I liked "Crafting A Compiler" as a starting point). If you're wanting to get a lot more precise about the way you build compilers, buy this book.


Rating: 2 out of 5
Not good as a first book on compilers
This book aims at teaching the reader how to write compilers and interpreters. Compared to other books (most notably the Dragon book - Aho, Sethi & Ullman: Compilers - Principles, Techniques and Tools) the structure and organization of the compiler he teaches are better and more in sync with modern compiler research. So although ML is not a language that is used much in practice it is well choosen for teaching compilers.

The first part of the book is intended for undergraduate Computer Science university student and the second part is for graduate students. I have only read the first part and browsed the second part. The first part is founded on the development of a compiler - the Tiger compiler - and that is the main flaw of the book. The Tiger compiler is fairly advanced and it is built up one phase at the time (see the chapter headings in the synopsis). A undergraduate reader who has never read anything about compiler design before will be very confused. The book is good in the way that it presents many good compiler design ideas and I learned some from it, but for me it was not the first book on compiler. I just think that the first part of the book has too steep a learning curve - even if you are proficient with ML, which is an absolute must. Recommended for serious readers who already know something about compiler construction before reading it. For other people I recommend the older but somewhat outdated book: Aho, Sethi & Ullman: Compilers - Principles, Techniques and Tools.

Similar Products

· ML for the Working Programmer
· Concurrent Programming in ML
· Theories of Programming Languages
· Types and Programming Languages
· Elements of ML Programming, ML97 Edition (2nd Edition)

Return To Main Computer Book IndexSearch Our Entire Computer Book Catalog