Let's make a Teeny Tiny compiler

Re:Let's make a Teeny Tiny compiler by Someone on Saturday June 06, 2020 @08:26PM (#23443589)

That can’t be it. The Basic interpreter could run the lexer on each line the user typed and store the tokens. You would lose the ability to print lines exactly the way the user typed them, but that isn’t a big blocker for the technology of the time.

Alternatively, the Basic interpreter could store each line as a combination of tokens and characters. Commodore Basic did that (https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2020/commodore-basic-renum...).

I also think none of the microcomputer Basics stored keywords as ascii strings. It would both slow down the interpreter and use more memory.

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Re:Let's make a Teeny Tiny compiler by edw on Sunday June 07, 2020 @01:10PM (#23448800)

I can confirm that AppleSoft ][ BASIC stored its programs in memory in tokenized form.

On another note, I went ahead and wrote a code emitter, because I couldn't wait for part three (though I noticed it's in the GitHub repo). Once you get this compiler up and running the sane thing to do is write a Makefile so you can treat Teeny as a first-class programming language. Just add a Makefile with the following:

    %.c : %.tiny
    <TAB>python3 ./teenytiny.py $< > $@

And you'll be able to type `make hello` and have hello.tiny compiled to hello.c compiled to hello automagically. I can never pass up an opportunity to remind people that Make is wonderful.

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