Tombstone diagram

Tombstone diagram representing an Ada compiler written in C that produces machine code.

Representation of the process of bootstrapping a C compiler written in C, by compiling it using another compiler written in machine code. To explain, the lefthand T is a C compiler written in C that produces machine code. The righthand T is a C compiler written in machine code that also produces machine code. The diagram illustrates that this can be used to bootstrap the left T by using it to compile the compiler written in C.

In computing, tombstone diagrams (or T-diagrams) consist of a set of “puzzle pieces” representing compilers and other related language processing programs. They are used to illustrate and reason about transformations from a source language (left of T) to a target language (right of T) realised in an implementation language (bottom of T). They are most commonly found describing complicated processes for bootstrapping, porting, and self-compiling of compilers, interpreters, and macro-processors.[1]

T-diagrams were first used for describing bootstrapping and cross-compiling compilers by Harvey Bratman in 1961,[2] who reshaped the diagrams originally introduced by Strong et al. (1958) to illustrate UNCOL. [3] Later on, others, including McKeeman et al. [4] and P.D. Terry,[1] explained the usage of T-diagrams with further detail. T-diagrams are also now used to describe client-server interconnectivity on the World Wide Web.[5] A teaching tool TDiag has been implemented at Leipzig University, Germany.[6]

## See also

* Bootstrapping (compilers)

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Terry, 1997, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3
2. ↑ Bratman, Harvey (March 1961). "A alternate form of the "UNCOL diagram"". Communications of the ACM 4 (3): 142. doi:10.1145/366199.366249. https://doi.org/10.1145/366199.366249. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
3. ↑ Strong, J.; Wegstein, J.; Tritter, A.; Olsztyn, J.; Mock, O.; Steel, T. (August 1958). "The Problem of Programming Communication with Changing Machines: A Proposed Solution". Communications of the ACM 1 (8): 12–18. doi:10.1145/368892.368915. https://doi.org/10.1145/368892.368915. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
4. ↑ McKeeman et al., A Compiler Generator (1971)
5. ↑ Patrick Closhen, Hans-Juergen Hoffmann, et al. 1997: T-Diagrams as Visual Language to Illustrate WWW Technology, Darmstadt University of Technology, Darmstadt, Germany
6. ↑ Michael Hielscher, et al.: TDiag: Entwicklung und Ausführung eines T-Diagramms, in German

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