How can I write a basic compiler to convert a static text into a machine readable file? The next step will be introducing variables into the compiler; imagine that we want to write a compiler which compile …

The compiler for X is cross compiled from another architecture where there exists a compiler for X; this is how compilers for C are usually ported to other platforms. Also this is the method used for Free …

Ken Thompson Hack (1984) Ken Thompson outlined a method for corrupting a compiler binary (and other compiled software, like a login script on a *nix system) in 1984. I was curious to know if modern

A compiler is a computer program (or set of instructions) that transforms source code written in a programming language (the source language) into another computer language (the target language, …

Reflections on Trusting Trust is a lecture by Ken Thompson in which he explains the hack. Briefly: he hacked /bin/login to introduce a backdoor. he did this by hacking the compiler to introduce the …

The aligned attribute forces the compiler to align that variable (your a array) to the specified alignment. The GCC documentation lists the attributes you can give, and you could even extend your GCC …

I'm trying to understand why the output file sizes are significantly different when using a C and a C++ compiler. I was writing a small hello world program in C and C++, I noticed that in C version, the size …

1 Am I correct here, thinking that I can write the C/C++ code one time, and then simply compile it (probably using different compilers, or different compiler configs) multiple times, one time for each …

Trying to outsmart the compiler doesn't usually make a big difference, and has a lot of chances to backfire. For instance, inlining makes your program bigger as it duplicates the code everywhere. If …

License for GCC runtime libraries adds another layer of restrictions while Clang compiler runtime (compiler-rt library) is under permissive MIT license. Summary: compile with Clang when you …