[sharmila]

Hi all,
I read that gcc is written in C language and can compile itself. But I did not understand how it will happen.Can anyone explain me how can a program compile itself?

Regards,
sharmila

[sharmila]

sorry.. my title is different.. how gcc is compiling itself?

[DaWei]

Source code is source code. The compiler doesn't know or care.

[sharmila]

http://www.network-theory.co.uk/docs...ccintro_5.html

In the link menctioned above, in 2nd para, there is a statement " GCC is written in C with a strong focus on portability, and can compile itself, so it can be adapted to new systems easily. "
what does this mean?

If we wrote a c-program, the compiler has to understand c-syntax, if the compiler itself is in C then how do it know which syntax it has to follow.

[shabbir]

Its an incremental development. Say I have a language X (could be an assembly as well) where I write the initial stages of the compiler and then use that compiler to develop the program itself. Now the final C compiler of GCC is developed in C and it could so happen that the initial module is also advanced to the C language.

[sharmila]

Thanks Shabbir..