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in reply to Re^4: Writing a Programming Language in Perl
in thread Writing a Programming Language in Perl

Everything is written in something else

Well, C is written in C. And I think Perl6 is written in Perl6.

This is done through a process called "bootstrapping". Basically, once one's compiler is sufficiently implemented in some language, one can port the compiler to the language it compiles. At that point, the original source is no longer needed; the previous version of the compiler can be used to build the next.

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Re^6: Writing a Programming Language in Perl
by anneli (Pilgrim) on Oct 26, 2011 at 07:58 UTC

    Ah, yes; well, it seemed best to neglect that detail at this level, but you raise an important exception to this rule.