Writing a Jack Compiler

Python implementation of a compiler for the Jack programming language from Nand2Tetris. Jack is a Java-like language designed to teach compiler concepts, which we compile to a lower-level bytecode VM (virtual machine) language. The specifications for Jack and the VM language were designed by Noam Nisan and Simon Schocken as part of The Elements of Computing Systems

Example Jack program and its compiled version

Example, the Jack program:

class program2{
    field int a;
    static string b;
    static string dragon;

    constructor void program(){
        return this;
    }

    method int foo(char a, int b, float c){
        var int counter;
        let counter = b; 
    }  
}

Should compile to something like:

function program2.program 0
push constant 1
call Memory.alloc 1
pop pointer 0
push pointer 0
return
function program2.foo 1
push argument 0
pop pointer 0
push argument 2
pop local 0

Features

• Our compiler is single pass and works by the method of mutual recursion of functions that correspond to the syntactic elements of the language
• Features of Jack are only the basics of programming languages in general: nested expressions, array indexing, method calls, branching, lexical scoping through a symbol table,
• The VM specification already abstracts procedure calls and basic memory segment management so those do not have to be implemented here

References

Noam Nisan and Simon Schocken - The Elements of Computing Systems