Like Loge, the cunning fire god from Wagner's Das Rheingold, I am no traditional compiler craftsman. Yet, driven by the spark of curiosity and a passion for creation, I am forging Loge, a compiler for the C programming language written in C. This project is my Valhalla—a monument to the power of personal exploration, built outside the confines of my professional domain.

Loge is a compiler designed to process a subset of the C programming language, The initial goal is to support a subset of the C language, including basic constructs such as variables, arithmetic operations, conditionals, loops, and functions, with potential expansion to full C standard compliance.

• Input: C source code (a subset of ANSI C for the initial version).
• Output: Assembly code or intermediate representation (IR) that can be assembled into machine code.
• Features:
  • Lexical analysis to tokenize C source code.
  • Syntactic analysis to build an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST).
  • Semantic analysis to check types and scoping rules.
  • Code generation targeting a simple architecture (e.g., x86 or a virtual machine).
• Self-hosting: The compiler will be written in C and eventually capable of compiling itself.
• Modularity: Designed with clear separation of concerns (lexer, parser, code generator).

1. Lexer: Tokenize the input C source code into keywords, identifiers, operators, and literals.
2. Parser: Construct an AST based on C grammar rules (using a recursive descent parser for simplicity).
3. Semantic Analysis: Validate types, scopes, and other semantic rules.
4. Code Generation: Generate assembly code or IR (e.g., LLVM IR for portability).
5. Optimization (optional): Implement basic optimizations like constant folding.
6. Backend: Link with an assembler or use a virtual machine for execution.

• C Compiler: GCC or Clang to compile the Loge compiler itself.
• Flex/Bison (optional): For generating lexer and parser code, though a hand-written lexer/parser is preferred for learning purposes.
• Assembler/Linker: NASM or GAS for x86 assembly, or LLVM for IR-based compilation.
• Testing Framework: Custom test suite to validate lexer, parser, and code generation.

./loge input.c -o output.asm

This command takes a C source file (input.c) and generates assembly code (output.asm).

• Support full ANSI C and C99 features.
• Add optimizations for performance.
• Enable self-hosting by compiling Loge with itself.
• Cross-platform support for multiple architectures.