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How could the first C++ compiler be written in C++?

I know my question goes to the underground galaxy cave where languages are born and involves some lambda math and light-years of google-studying. But what kind of knowledge is necessary to create a language?

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    Possible duplicate: "Chickens come from eggs but eggs come from chickens, how is this possible?" :) Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 15:48
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    1st appear: "the CREATOR", 2nd to get in: "the egg." 3rd and last "the chicken" . Learned from this guys, they are very funny! Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 16:09
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    Unless you are from the Star Wars universe (where parsecs are apparently units for measuring time and not distance), you could change that to "years of google studying" :-) Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 16:35
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    @Francesco I am from Star Wars universe, nice to meet you. Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 22:00
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    Vote to reopen, the best answer in the other question seems fairly C++ specific. C != C++. Also, the question here seems like it might be a tad more general. Commented Mar 27, 2012 at 21:45

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Look up "bootstrapping".

Basically you start with a very minimal process/set of functions that can be used to compile the code that defines a slightly more functional compiler. This creates your next compiler which then can then be used to build code that can do even more. You repeat this process until you have a full blown compiler that can compile all the language features.

The other alternative is to write the first version of the compiler in a different language and then write the next version in your target language.

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    I've always been baffled by the idea of a compiler being able to compile itself, but that cleared it up quite a bit. Thanks! Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 15:07
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    The very first compiler may be written in another language too, and then rewritten as soon the new compiler has enough features. Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 15:10
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    It would be really interesting to see a list of self-compiling languages, as well as the languages they were originally written in. Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 15:23
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    @mcmcc That would be the scenario described in Reflections on Trusting Trust, written by Ken Thompson. Whether or not anyone's actually snuck code like that into a mainstream compiler is questionable. Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 15:53
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    When two compilers love each other very much... Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 22:41
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ChrisF's answer is excellent, but I wanted to add this example that always stuck by me after my computer science course on bootstrapping.

Suppose you have a basic C compiler that does not support escape codes for strings yet, and you wanted to add that. You could add a snippet of code similar to this:

if( str[i] == 0x5c ) { // ASCII code for backslash switch( str[i+1] ) { case 'n': return 0x0a; // ASCII code for new line case 't': return 0x09; // ASCII code for tab // ... // more ASCII code for other escapes default: return str[i+1]; } }

After you have added this to the compiler, and generated a new compiler binary, you could then rewrite this into:

if( str[i] == '\\' ) { switch( str[i+1] ) { case 'n': return '\n'; case 't': return '\t'; // ... default: return str[i+1]; } }

That would remove any knowledge about ASCII codes from the compiler source code, but the compiler would still magically generate the correct codes.

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Bootstrapping is definitely the standard way to build a compiler today. But remember that you don't need a compiler or interpreter to write a program in a language. For instance, Christopher Strachey wrote a famous AI program that was able to play Checkers in CPL before there was a compiler for CPL. He had to translate the program to machine code "manually", which is tedious and error-prone, but not really difficult (that's why computers can do it so well).

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    That would be named the "human compiler", right? Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 15:52
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    its not really accurate to say there was no compiler, manual compilation makes you the compiler. Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 15:55
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    @Ryathal: According to wikipedia, "A compiler is a computer program (or set of programs) that transforms source code ...". So, since a human being isn't a computer program, a human can't be a compiler ;-) Commented Mar 26, 2012 at 16:47
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    Wikipedia can't possibly be wrong Commented Nov 23, 2015 at 4:03
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I hope this is not out of topic, but I wanted to point out that, once you have one C compiler for one platform X, bootstrapping for other platforms can be done by using cross-compilation:

  • You have a C compiler c1 for architecture X that runs on architecture X.
  • You write a C compiler c2 for architecture Y, written in C.
  • You compile the compiler c2 on X using c1 and obtain the binary for compiler c2 that runs on X.
  • You use the binary for c2 that runs on X to compile itself and obtain a binary of c2 that will run on Y.

In other words, when you have the first egg, it is easy to make more eggs.

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