plcc-ng is a tool for building interpreters and compilers in the classroom. This demo lets you explore it hands-on — no setup required. Click the button below to launch a ready-to-use environment in GitHub Codespaces.
Want to see plcc-ng in action right away? Open a terminal in your Codespace and navigate to the semantic solution:
cd 03-semantic/solution
Then follow the README.md there. You'll use all three plcc-ng tools on a
working prefix expression evaluator, and choose which programming language
to run the semantics in.
Want to experience what your students will? Work through the exercises in order, starting here:
cd 01-lexical
Each directory has a README.md with instructions. You'll build a scanner,
then a parser, then a complete interpreter — one step at a time.
The three activities progress through the phases of language processing:
01-lexical/— define tokens with regular expressions02-syntactic/— define grammar rules and build a parser03-semantic/— add meaning: evaluate prefix arithmetic expressions
Solutions are in each solution/ directory if you get stuck or want to
compare.