Build Your Own .NET Language and Compiler

All software developers use languages, which are the fundamental tool of the trade. Despite curiosity about how languages work, few developers actually understand how. Unfortunately, most texts on language and compiler development are hard to digest, written from academic platforms for use in college-level computer science programs. On the other hand, Build Your Own .NET Language and Compiler demystifies compiler and language development, and makes the subjects palatable for all programmers.

This practical book presents techniques that you can apply to everyday work. You’ll learn to add scripts and macro languages to your applications, add runtime expression evaluation to their applications, and generate code immediately. Further, you will learn parsing techniques, which are essential to extract information from any structured form of datalike text files, user input, XML, or HTML. As a bonus, the book includes a complete QuickBasic compatible compiler with source code that works. The compiler illustrates the books techniques and acts as a versatile .NET language.

After describing the basics of the .NET framework, this book shows how to write a halfway decent compiler using object-oriented techniques to compile Basic. The author explains the formal notation Backus-Naur Form for designing the syntax of a language, presents an object-oriented approach to storing variables and their types in the Basic language, and builds the actual parsing front end of a compiler. An appendix documents the properties and methods exposed by the quick basic engine. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Edward G. Nilges has been developing software since 1970. He worked on debugging an early Fortran compiler in 1972 and made it available to a university community. While at Bell-Northern Research, the research arm of Nortel Networks, in 1981, Nilges worked on compiler development and developed the SL-1XT compiler for voice and data PBX programming, as well as a firmware assembler that was compiled automatically from the firmware reference manual.

In 1993, Nilges began developing with VB3 and has developed a variety of projects in Basic. Edward also assisted mathematician John Nash (the real-life protagonist of the movie A Beautiful Mind) with C during a critical period in which Dr. Nash was being considered for the 1993 Nobel Prize. In 1999, Edward developed his vbExpression2Value VB6 technology to parse and interpret SQL Server and VB expressions for his classes at DeVry. In 2001, acting upon a suggestion from a student colleague at Princeton, Nilges used his beta copy of VB .NET to write the fully OO quickBasicEngine.

Nilges currently consults on the use of compiler technology in the real world to parse and interpret complex business rules in industries such as mortgage lending and credit evaluation. He finds that compiler optimization can be used to verify the consistency and completeness of business rule sets.