simple lisp interpreter help needed

T

Thomas

Hello,


I am a CS student and I want to write simple lisp interpreter. The code
should be entierly in C. I don't want to use any compiler generators like
Bison or Yak, since wrinting this in raw C will give me more experience. I
wrote a simple lexer ( changes leksems into the streams of tokens). The Lisp
dialect I have to implement is not defined in any formal way, but I have a
description of how it should behave (say its a >>writen halformal
description which leads me to confusion <<). I ask for some tips, materials
or guidence. Oh and it should use some garbage collector, but I think this
should be implemented in the end. I suppose I need to define data
structures in a clear way. I don't give a description of that machine lisp
abstraction, since all are similar. The fragment of the descripion is this :


(...)Program in Ansi C an interpreter of Lisp dialect described above. It
should contain efective implementation of the associate list, agregeting
atoms linked with values by the pseudofunction define and using some simple
garbage collector algorithm (the cell is alive, if it is possilble to reach
it starting from the atom belonging to the association list. The symbolic
data constructed during interpreter run should be put in array dyn_mem
define for example like this:

======================================================================

#define MEMSIZE 1024
struct cell {
union data *left, *right;
};
union data {
int atom; /* when MSB == 1 */
struct cell *next; /* when MSB == 0 */
};
struct cell dyn_mem[MEMSIZE];

======================================================================

Notice that this structure doesn't have MSB, to add in the orginal MacArthy
lisp it was the redundant part of data register ( 36 -th bit or something),
suppose this trick wouldn't go by on a 386 .....
 
J

Jack Klein

Hello,


I am a CS student and I want to write simple lisp interpreter. The code
should be entierly in C. I don't want to use any compiler generators like
Bison or Yak, since wrinting this in raw C will give me more experience. I
wrote a simple lexer ( changes leksems into the streams of tokens). The Lisp
dialect I have to implement is not defined in any formal way, but I have a
description of how it should behave (say its a >>writen halformal
description which leads me to confusion <<). I ask for some tips, materials
or guidence. Oh and it should use some garbage collector, but I think this
should be implemented in the end. I suppose I need to define data
structures in a clear way. I don't give a description of that machine lisp
abstraction, since all are similar. The fragment of the descripion is this :


(...)Program in Ansi C an interpreter of Lisp dialect described above. It
should contain efective implementation of the associate list, agregeting
atoms linked with values by the pseudofunction define and using some simple
garbage collector algorithm (the cell is alive, if it is possilble to reach
it starting from the atom belonging to the association list. The symbolic
data constructed during interpreter run should be put in array dyn_mem
define for example like this:

======================================================================

#define MEMSIZE 1024
struct cell {
union data *left, *right;
};
union data {
int atom; /* when MSB == 1 */
struct cell *next; /* when MSB == 0 */
};
struct cell dyn_mem[MEMSIZE];

======================================================================

Notice that this structure doesn't have MSB, to add in the orginal MacArthy
lisp it was the redundant part of data register ( 36 -th bit or something),
suppose this trick wouldn't go by on a 386 .....

I don't understand what your C question is, if indeed you have one.

The common method to implement a union which might hold two different
types at different times, the type to be determined at run-time when
it is accessed, is usually something like this:

enum { is_ptr, is_atom } cell_type;

union cell_data { int atom; struct cell *next; };

struct cell { enum cell_type type; union cell_data data; };

Then when accessing a cell, the code first reads the type member to
determine which member of the data union is present.

--
Jack Klein
Home: http://JK-Technology.Com
FAQs for
comp.lang.c http://c-faq.com/
comp.lang.c++ http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/
alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++
http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/docs/FAQ-acllc.html
 
K

Keith Thompson

Jack Klein said:
enum { is_ptr, is_atom } cell_type;

This declares a single object of an anonymous enum type. You want:

enum cell_type { is_ptr, is_atom };
union cell_data { int atom; struct cell *next; };

struct cell { enum cell_type type; union cell_data data; };
[...]
 
T

Thomas

Uzytkownik "Jack Klein said:
Hello,


I am a CS student and I want to write simple lisp interpreter. The code
should be entierly in C. I don't want to use any compiler generators like
Bison or Yak, since wrinting this in raw C will give me more experience. I
wrote a simple lexer ( changes leksems into the streams of tokens). The Lisp
dialect I have to implement is not defined in any formal way, but I have a
description of how it should behave (say its a >>writen halformal
description which leads me to confusion <<). I ask for some tips, materials
or guidence. Oh and it should use some garbage collector, but I think this
should be implemented in the end. I suppose I need to define data
structures in a clear way. I don't give a description of that machine lisp
abstraction, since all are similar. The fragment of the descripion is this :


(...)Program in Ansi C an interpreter of Lisp dialect described above. It
should contain efective implementation of the associate list, agregeting
atoms linked with values by the pseudofunction define and using some simple
garbage collector algorithm (the cell is alive, if it is possilble to reach
it starting from the atom belonging to the association list. The symbolic
data constructed during interpreter run should be put in array dyn_mem
define for example like this:

======================================================================

#define MEMSIZE 1024
struct cell {
union data *left, *right;
};
union data {
int atom; /* when MSB == 1 */
struct cell *next; /* when MSB == 0 */
};
struct cell dyn_mem[MEMSIZE];

======================================================================

Notice that this structure doesn't have MSB, to add in the orginal MacArthy
lisp it was the redundant part of data register ( 36 -th bit or something),
suppose this trick wouldn't go by on a 386 .....

I don't understand what your C question is, if indeed you have one.

The common method to implement a union which might hold two different
types at different times, the type to be determined at run-time when
it is accessed, is usually something like this:

enum { is_ptr, is_atom } cell_type;

union cell_data { int atom; struct cell *next; };

struct cell { enum cell_type type; union cell_data data; };

Then when accessing a cell, the code first reads the type member to
determine which member of the data union is present.

--
Jack Klein
Home: http://JK-Technology.Com
FAQs for
comp.lang.c http://c-faq.com/
comp.lang.c++ http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/
alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++
http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/docs/FAQ-acllc.html

Ok, thanks that makes sense. Well, maybe my C question is not well defined,
but I have not found any better places for this post.
 
J

Jack Klein

Jack Klein said:
enum { is_ptr, is_atom } cell_type;

This declares a single object of an anonymous enum type. You want:

enum cell_type { is_ptr, is_atom };
union cell_data { int atom; struct cell *next; };

struct cell { enum cell_type type; union cell_data data; };
[...]

Yes of course, thanks.

--
Jack Klein
Home: http://JK-Technology.Com
FAQs for
comp.lang.c http://c-faq.com/
comp.lang.c++ http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/
alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++
http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/docs/FAQ-acllc.html
 

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