Designed as a self-study guide, the book describes the real-world tradeoffs encountered in building a production-quality, platform-retargetable compiler. The authors examine the implementation of lcc, a production-quality, research-oriented retargetable compiler, designed at AT&T Bell Laboratories for the ANSI C programming language. The authors' innovative approach-a "literate program" that intermingles the text with the source code-uses a line-by-line explanation of the code to demonstrate how lcc is built.

End of the line. Amidst a backdrop of apocalypse, the characters in Tales From The End struggle with the slow breakdown of the sanity of the world around them, along with their own delicate minds. It sweeps across the globe, plunging us into unfamiliar settings and placing us face to face with the only people left alive to tell the often-touching, sometimes-gruesome and always downright absurd story. Included: the moment when a whole town lost their eyes, a man whose body becomes a bomb scare, two blood-powered robots at the heart of a volcano, the disgruntled employee of a bubble factory, the dark underbelly of the consumer electronics industry, an expos of post-apocalyptic prostitution, long-dead Hollywood actors screaming their way across Mumbai, ominous, hovering sanctuary ships gliding above Africa, and the botched teleportation of a dead stork. Ladies and gentlemen: if they haven't slipped off to another dimension, fasten your seatbelts....