Includes bibliography and index.

"This book is a descendant of Principles of Compiled Design, it is intended as a text for a first course in compiler design. The emphasis is on solving problems universally encountered in designing a language translator, regardless of the source or target machine. Although few people are likely to build or even maintain a compiler for a major programming language, the reader can profitably apply the ideas and techniques discussed in this book to general software design. For example, the string matching techniques for building lexical analysers have also been used in text editors, information retrieval systems, and pattern recognition programs. Context-free grammars and syntax-directed definitions have been used to build many little languages such as the typesetting and figure drawing systems that produced this book. The techniques of code optimization have been used in program verifiers and in programs that produce "structured" programs from unstructured ones. "

English text.