Reddit reviews Lisp in Small Pieces

Weird ... the same book on US Amazon is $51.35 - check it

I just taught a compilers class. I've been posting my lecture notes on my blog (with many more to come); these might be useful to you:

• Meta-circular evaluators and first-class macros
  
• Compiling to Java
  
• Compiling to C
  
  I recommend writing a Scheme compiler first, and I'd use Lisp in Small Pieces instead of the Dragon book.
  
  The Appel books are also a good treatment of compiler writing.
  
  Try writing a recursive descent parser by hand first. This is a manageable endeavor for a Scheme-like language. I wouldn't bother with ANTLR for a second attempt; I'd use one of the hot parser combinator libraries instead.
  
  In total, a good first compiler project would be something like:
  
  
• A hand-written lexer.
  
• A recursive-descent parser.
  
• A normalizing pass to flatten expressions.
  
• An escape-analysis pass.
  
• A closure conversion pass.
  
• A lambda-lifting pass.
  
• A C-emission pass.
  
  You could then retarget to x86 if you write a register allocator.
  
  Good luck!

My memory is that this book implements a dynamically scoped lisp. See Lisp in Small Pieces for more modern implementations that include lexical scoping.

(Note: I have been out of the Lisp games for years so this info might only be partially correct.)

Scheme for the kinda-JVM is a pretty hair-raising task indeed, at least if you want to implement all of RnRS. With that said, if you want to pursue it, I'd highly recommend adding Lisp In Small Pieces to your reading list. :-)

readscheme is a good place to start, it hasa a bunch of good links to papers on issues related to macros: http://library.readscheme.org/page3.html

(It also has lots of other material, but you asked about macros specifically, so that's the link I've posted.)



If you can buy one book, buy Lisp In Small Pieces. It's generally excellent, and has good coverage of macro implementation strategies.

http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/dp/0521545668/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196347235&sr=8-1

Another good resource is the discussion of an implementation of syntax-case that's in "Beautiful Code": http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Code-Leading-Programmers-Practice/dp/0596510047/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196346388&sr=8-1