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A comment on Show HN: A complete Bash parser in JavaScript transpiled from Go. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: A complete Bash parser in JavaScript transpiled ... by badsectoracula on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @09:20PM (#17087887)
AFAIK Wirth's own compilers never use an AST. Also early (and perhaps late) versions of Turbo Pascal emit code as fast as it can parse it. Here is a document describing how Turbo Pascal 3 worked (by someone who reverse engineered it):

https://www.pcengines.ch/tp3.htm

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Re:Show HN: A complete Bash parser in JavaScript transpiled ... by monocasa on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @09:28PM (#17087938)
Isn't the AST there, but just hidden? It looks like the AST is the compiler's stack, it's just building the tree while doing a DFS and then cleaning up after itself as it goes.

Super cool though. Thanks!

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Re:Show HN: A complete Bash parser in JavaScript transpiled ... by badsectoracula on Thursday May 17, 2018 @08:06AM (#17090588)
I think calling the call stack an AST is stretching things a bit :-P. Turbo Pascal (and most of Wirth's own compilers) is a simple recursive descent compiler that emits code almost as soon as it scans a token and it keeps very little information around.
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