C89 compiler produces printable executables from C code [pdf] (2017) | Hacker News Reader

C89 compiler produces printable executables from C code [pdf] (2017)

cs.cmu.edu

125 pointsCharlesW15 comments

The author is an absolute legend. Absolutely every video on his Youtube channel is a masterpiece

https://www.youtube.com/@tom7

And this includes the video that explains this code (Compiling C to printable x86, to make an executable research paper)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA

Is this information available in non-video form?

TFA is the paper resulting from the video. Although you're missing a lot not watching the video as his presentation style is unique and entertaining.

The paper is fun too. Tom said

> If you have the time, I think reading the paper is the best way to experience it. But I also created the following video that explains the ideas involved, for interested non-experts or patient experts.

His most recent one was on HN a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36806970

(2017), but still worth reading again.

There is actually a more "traditional" way of doing this, which is to convert a regular executable to an ASCII one using a separate tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312562

Recently I was working on something like that [1]. Basically I created simple C compiler (with IR and other stuff) that compiles code to basic X86 16bit instructions which can be directly booted into real mode.

[1] https://github.com/Mati365/ts-c-compiler

this is awesome!

What is sigbovik like, and did he present this at that conference?

Sigbovik is a joke conference put on by CMU students. About 80%-90% of the papers each year are pure jokes, but about 10-20% of them are jokes that have a nontrivial amount of work backing them up. These papers are awesome. Tom publishes at least one every year (sometimes 3-4) and his papers are among the best but there are others that are also awesome. It hits a very fun combination of hard work on trivial problems that is fascinating.

They publish a proceedings every year and they are fun reads.

Not a lot of people do accompanying videos like Tom does, but this one on WordTeX is excellent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlX_pThh7z8

I think tom7 and tomw are two different people.

They are different people, yes. That's why I mentioned the video as an example of somebody who isn't Tom7 doing an associated video.

I guess my text was a little unclear.

One of the proceedings had a table with "serious/humorous presentation" on one axis and "serious/humorous idea" on the other. Normal conferences take the niche of "serious ideas presented seriously". For everything else, there's SIGBOVIK.

I've read this paper a few years ago, it's a timeless classic :)

It’s only a matter of time before someone writes a meta-verilog wrapper for this and the universe implodes.

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