Order a paperback copy at Lulu.com
Read the first pages (PDF)
Download the Sources
Play the Game
Scheme 9 from Empty Space reproduces the completely self-contained and heavily commented C and Scheme source code to a full, real-world interpreter for the Scheme programming language. By means of extensive annotations, examples, and numerous figures, it answers a lot of questions about crafting an interpreter, including:
- How does automatic memory management work?
- How is macro expansion implemented?
- How do lexical scoping and dynamic scoping work?
- How is arbitrary precision arithmetics implemented?
- How does tail call elimination work?
- How are first-class continuations implemented?
This textbook is intended as a practical guide for everybody who wants to take a deeper look at the techniques behind the interpretation of computer programs. It does not stop where other books do, and takes a deep look behind the scenes of a real interpreter.
- What people say about S9fES: *
- "Holm knows what he's doing"
- "Fills a gap in the area of Scheme books"
- "Best bootstrapping book ever"
- "Faithful to the Lisp tradition"
- "Pure awesomeness"
* Extracted from Lulu reviews, Reddit, and e-mail conversations.
- Lulu Press, 2010
- 247 pages
- 31 figures
- workbook format
- public domain code