Skip to content
Projects

lotabout/write-a-C-interpreter

View on GitHub

lotabout/write-a-C-interpreter has 4,402 GitHub stars and 772 forks. GitHot measured 0 stars in 24 hours and -2 in 7 days. Last checked 2026-11-09 13:38 UTC. Last push 2025-11-22.

How these counts are measured

Write a simple interpreter of C. Inspired by c4 and largely based on it.

Measured star growth

in 24h
0
in 7 days
-2
in 15 days
Update delayed
in 1 month
Update delayed

Net star changes over overlapping periods, not daily totals. Missing measurements are left blank. Stars measure attention, not software quality.

README.md

Original

C interpreter that interprets itself.

How to Run the Code

File xc.c is the original one and xc-tutor.c is the one that I make for the tutorial step by step.

gcc -o xc xc.c
./xc hello.c
./xc -s hello.c

./xc xc.c hello.c
./xc xc.c xc.c hello.c

About

This project is inspired by c4 and is largely based on it.

However, I rewrote them all to make it more understandable and help myself to understand it.

Despite the complexity we saw in books about compiler design, writing one is not that hard. You don't need that much theory though they will help for better understanding the logic behind the code.

Also I write a series of article about how this compiler is built under directory tutorial/en.

There is also a chinese version in my blog.

  1. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(0)——前言
  2. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(1)——设计
  3. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(2)——虚拟机
  4. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(3)——词法分析器
  5. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(4)——递归下降
  6. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(5)——变量定义
  7. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(6)——函数定义
  8. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(7)——语句
  9. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(8)——表达式
  10. 手把手教你构建 C 语言编译器(9)——总结

Resources

Further Reading:

Forks:

Licence

The original code is licenced with GPL2, so this code will use the same licence.

Explore related projects