A step-by-step coding essay
Here, I am starting publishing the chapters of my book, Creating a Compiler with Raku. I am planning to add a new chapter every week on Sundays.
Contents
Chapter 1. Creating a Simple Interpreter
- Grammar
- Actions
- Modules
Chapter 2. Parsing a Number
- Finding a number
- Getting the value
- Using AST
- Final notes
Chapter 3. Creating a Calculator
- Enrolling a sum
- Premature optimization
- More operands
- A diversity test
- Adding more math
- Testing the code
- Adding more power
- Allowing parentheses
Chapter 4. A Better Interpreter
- Skipping comments
- Sophisticated numbers
- Sophisticated expressions
- Using variables
- Declaration with initialization
Chapter 5. Working on Grammar
- Executable
- Composing and inheriting grammars
- Reviewing the calculator
- Using multi-rules
- Get rid of globals
- Better variable names
- Functions take expressions
Chapter 6. Working with Strings
- Strings
- Escaping quotes
- Indexing a string
Chapter 7. Arrays and Hashes
- Arrays
- Assigning to an array item
- Side story: The joy of syntax
- Accessing array elements
- List assignments
- Printing arrays
- Hashes
- Review and test
Chapter 8. Building AST. Part 1
- Thinking of the
if
keyword - The AST blocks
- Value nodes
Chapter 8. Building AST. Part 2
- Declaring strings
- Declaring arrays and hashes
- Scalar assignment
- Working with indices
- Array and hash assignment and initialisation
- AST for expressions
- Function calls
- Final tuning
Chapter 9. Evaluating AST
- Evaluating from the top
- Working with variables
- String interpolation
- Using Raku getters
- Interpolating everywhere
- Arithmetic operations
Chapter 10. Test Suite
- Test runner
- Tests
- Numbers
- Strings
- Expressions
- Arrays and hashes
- Spotting the errors
- Feature coverage
- It is never enough
Chapter 11. Control Flow
- Implementing
if
- Implementing
else
- Implementing a loop
- Statement blocks
- Blocks in the AST
- A real-life test
- Conditional operators
- Implementing the
while
loop
Chapter 12. Functions
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The book was started when Raku was Perl 6, so it may occasionally happen that you see the old name of the language (would I start it today, I might misspell it too :-).
Return to this page later to see the next chapter.
You are welcome to leave comments, both as comments under the chapters, as well as via email.