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Build A Simple Interpreter with Rust Part0

· 2 min read
forfd8960
forfd8960
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What is Interpreter​

From Wikipedia:

In computer science, an interpreter is a computer program that directly executes instructions written in a programming or scripting language, without requiring them previously to have been compiled into a machine language program. An interpreter generally uses one of the following strategies for program execution:

  1. Parse the source code and perform its behavior directly;
  2. Translate source code into some efficient intermediate representation or object code and immediately execute that;
  3. Explicitly execute stored precompiled bytecode made by a compiler and matched with the interpreter Virtual Machine.

Why use Rust to build​

I am currently learning rust, and want to use it build something and learning rust by building things.

Where to start​

SO when I start to research how to build a interpreter and want to know how the program was run by the operating system under the hood.

And I searched, found 2 very useful resource below:

  • Writing An Interpreter In Go

Writing-Interpreter-in-Go

  • craftinginterpreters.com

craftinginterpreters

And I learned a lot from them about how interpreter works. So I decided use rust to implement the interpter by what I learned from them.

The data flow Of the Interpreter​

FlowOfInterpreter

  • Lexer

    the lexer is where the input text been split into tokens.

  • Parser

    the parser receives the tokens stream from the Lexer, and group the tokens into many Abstract Syntax Tree Node(Statement).

  • Eval

    the Eval will Recuisively calculate the AST Nodes(Statements) one by one, util the last statement. and produces objects.