Customer Reviews
Complete book - how about beginners ? - By: R. Zaghi, 11 Sep 2007 
Among alll the others I chose this one for it covers most of the important topics & doesn't waste time discussing old methods.
I am an experienced programmer but never studied compilers before this book so because it's a relatively advanced book I had to read the first 2 chapters 3 times :D together with "The Definitive ANTLR Reference" & the "Flexible Pattern Matching in Strings". But now that I know the basics this book serves reallly well & I enjoy reading it too.
So it's good to try the other books for a more practical experience as well.
very well written, explains technical subject succinctly - By: Daniel Clarke, 25 Jun 2003 Very easy to follow with good material on everything I wanted to know. The explanation & discussion are top quality, in many cases I no longer find certain things complex! I found this book to be much more readable/accessible than the dragon book
Good and comprehensive - but not an introduction - By: , 22 Jul 2002 
One of the better books on compiler design but not for beginners, who should probably start with the excellent "Modern Compiler Implementation in Java" by David Watt & Deryck Brown. This is a good second text, with a nice balance between introductory & advanced material, including one of the better treatments of type inference that I have seen in a textbook. If you are considering this book, you should also look at the alternatives by Appel & by Aho, Sethi & Ullman, which cover similar ground. To my mind this book is the best of the three, but if you are interested in functional languages, you might prefer the version of Appel's book that uses ML.
Not for the beginner - By: , 12 Mar 2002 
This book covers a lot of ground & quickly descends into complex theories about compiler design. This is undoubtly an excellent source for people who already understand compiler design & wish to advance their knowledge. If however, you are like me & want to start learning from scratch then this book isn't for you.
First class, extremely readable and well written - By: , 13 Oct 2000 Certainly the best-written book on compilers, I have ever read. Many other books cover the same ground (and more), but none explains it nearly so well. Reading this first & then the Dragon Book afterwards, will take you less time than reading the Dragon Book on it's own.
