size of Wirth's Oberon compiler

In the call just now, the question "just how big / small *is* Wirth's
compiler for Oberon?".  I have now downloaded the five source files for
the compiler from http://www.projectoberon.net/ (which mirrors files on
Wirth's own machine at ETH) and can report that they total about 121 kB
in 3124 lines.

I think that counts as small for a compiler intended for production use
rather than as a toy or exercise, but big enough to be a plausible demo
of an ixml parser.  (And big enough to be a challenge for some Earley
parsers.)

Some work is needed before we can actually use these for a demo; in
particular, parsing them is uncovering flaws in my transcription of the
Oberon grammar and errors in my handling of whitespace in the ixml form
of the grammar.  But I am always hopeful that I have just now removed
the last bug ...

Michael

-- 
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Black Mesa Technologies LLC
http://blackmesatech.com

Received on Tuesday, 21 June 2022 19:22:47 UTC