Compiling to Assembly
from Scratch

Chapter 10
Primitive Scalar Data Types

When we say scalar data types we mean data types that fit into a single machine word, which is not a pointer but carries a value in itself. We already have one scalar data type for integer numbers.

Let’s introduce a boolean data type. First, we need an AST node for it:

class Boolean implements AST {
  constructor(public value: boolean) {}

  emit(env: Environment) {
    if (this.value) {
      emit(`  mov r0, #1`);
    } else {
      emit(`  mov r0, #0`);
    }
  }

  equals(other: AST): boolean {…}
}

We emit it the same way as integers 1 and 0 (for true and false).

In the parser, we introduce new tokens for true and false, and compose them to create a boolean parser:

let TRUE =
  token(/true\b/y).map((_) => new Boolean(true));
let FALSE =
  token(/false\b/y).map((_) => new Boolean(false));

let boolean: Parser<AST> = TRUE.or(FALSE)

We can extend the atom rule of the expression grammar by adding a boolean alternative. A good idea at this point is to introduce an additional scalar rule:

scalar <- boolean / ID / NUMBER
atom <- call / scalar / LEFT_PAREN expression RIGHT_PAREN

Then, after implementing this grammar as a parser we get booleans in our extended baseline language:

assert(true);
assert(!false);

However, they behave exactly like integers 1 and 0, so assert(true == 1) will succeed. Under static typing, this comparison would be rejected by the compiler. Under dynamic typing, this would evaluate to false at run-time.

Similarly, we can add other scalars, such as undefined, null (that compile to 0, like false), or a character type, which could compile to the integer value of its ASCII code (though, JavaScript and TypeScript treat characters as strings).