Experiences with Gentle: Efficient Compiler Construction Based On Logic Programming

Gentle [Schroer 89] is a compiler description language in the tradition of two level grammars [Koster 71] and logic programming [Warren 80]. It provides a common declarative notation for high level description of analysis, transformation, and synthesis. Imperative constructs like global variables and dynamic arrays, needed for efficient compiler construction, are introduced as well. A tool has been implemented to check the wellformedness of Gentle descriptions, and to generate very fast (generation speed 260.000 lines per minute) very efficient compilers (compilation speed nearly 90.000 line per minute on Dec 3100 workstation). The language and a supporting tool were designed and implemented by F.W. Schroer in 1989.