So I’ve already posted this question on Stack Overflow, but I wanted to ask it here as well, since I am not sure if they will simply say it is a duplicate (even though the other answers from other questions don’t answer what I asked in a way that helps me).
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78539284/in-bootstrapping-how-is-the-compiler-written-in-the-other-langauge-such-that-it](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78539284/in-bootstrapping-how-is-the-compiler-written-in-the-other-langauge-such-that-it)
So I was wondering if there were direct examples people could give of how the bootstrap compiler is actually written such that it actually represents the language you want to write in another language, because my head can’t wrap itself around it and most sources are fairly vague and just assume you know how it is done.
Hell, maybe if people try and explain it in a metaphorical way and walk me through how the bootstrap compiler is written to represent language X in language Y, that might help too, since I am not a programmer, but this concept is stressing me out from knowing I don’t understand it.
In: Technology
> I am not a programmer
You’re going to have difficulty getting non-vague answers you understand to *a lot* of programming questions, especially tricky ones.
Compiler design has a reputation for being one of the most tricky programming topics you’re likely to see. (More tricky stuff exists, but tends to be more niche.)
> such that it actually represents the language you want to write in another language
Source code is bytes in a file. A compiled program is also bytes in a file.
A compiler reads the input bytes from the source code file, processes them, and writes some bytes to the output file.
A compiler is basically a very complicated string processing program.
> how the bootstrap compiler is actually written
There’s nothing special about the bootstrap compiler, it’s written like any other compiler. It just happens to be written in a different language than the code it’s compiling.
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