Starting to learn compilers

I am starting to learn about compilers. There are a bunch of resources, which is a bit confusing. This blog will contain my notes as I try to make sense of concepts related to compilers, grammer, tools (like ANTLR, JavaCC, etc)

Since I have learned this subject when was in undergrad (a long time back), I at least understand some of the concepts, and remember some stuff. However, I learned it in a very theoretical way, so I have absolutely no grounding in the practice of CC, and again since most of my knowledge is theoretical, I have also forgotten most of it.

Below is a list of things I think I will need to understand:

• What is a context free grammar?
• What is the significance of context free, in context free grammar?
• What is a lexer?
• What is a parser?
• How do we walk a parser tree?
• How do we introduce semantic rules in the AST?
• How do we interpret langauges?