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TUTOR.ZIP | ||
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This file contains all of the installments of Jack Crenshaw's | ||
tutorial on compiler construction, including the new Installment 15. | ||
The intended audience is those folks who are not computer scientists, | ||
but who enjoy computing and have always wanted to know how compilers | ||
work. A lot of compiler theory has been left out, but the practical | ||
issues are covered. By the time you have completed the series, you | ||
should be able to design and build your own working compiler. It will | ||
not be the world's best, nor will it put out incredibly tight code. | ||
Your product will probably never put Borland or MicroSoft out of | ||
business. But it will work, and it will be yours. | ||
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A word about the file format: The files were originally created using | ||
Borland's DOS editor, Sprint. Sprint could write to a text file only | ||
if you formatted the file to go to the selected printer. I used the | ||
most common printer I could think of, the Epson MX-80, but even then | ||
the files ended up with printer control sequences at the beginning | ||
and end of each page. | ||
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To bring the files up to date and get myself positioned to continue | ||
the series, I recently (1994) converted all the files to work with | ||
Microsoft Word for Windows. Unlike Sprint, Word allows you to write | ||
the file as a DOS text file. Unfortunately, this gave me a new | ||
problem, because when Word is writing to a text file, it doesn't | ||
write hard page breaks or page numbers. In other words, in six years | ||
we've gone from a file with page breaks and page numbers, but | ||
embedded escape sequences, to files with no embedded escape sequences | ||
but no page breaks or page numbers. Isn't progress wonderful? | ||
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Of course, it's possible for me to insert the page numbers as | ||
straight text, rather than asking the editor to do it for me. But | ||
since Word won't allow me to write page breaks to the file, we would | ||
end up with files with page numbers that may or may not fall at the | ||
ends of the pages, depending on your editor and your printer. It | ||
seems to me that almost every file I've ever downloaded from | ||
CompuServe or BBS's that had such page numbering was incompatible | ||
with my printer, and gave me pages that were one line short or one | ||
line long, with the page numbers consequently walking up the page. | ||
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So perhaps this new format is, after all, the safest one for general | ||
distribution. The files as they exist will look just fine if read | ||
into any text editor capable of reading DOS text files. Since most | ||
editors these days include rather sophisticated word processing | ||
capabilities, you should be able to get your editor to paginate for | ||
you, prior to printing. | ||
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I hope you like the tutorials. Much thought went into them. | ||
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Jack W. Crenshaw | ||
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CompuServe 72325,1327 | ||
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