c# - Constructing a simple interpreter

Question

I’m starting a project where I need to implement a light-weight interpreter. The interpreter is used to execute simple scientific algorithms. The programming language that this interpreter will use should be simple, since it is targeting non- software developers (for example, mathematicians.)

The interpreter should support basic programming languages features:

• Real numbers, variables, multi-dimensional arrays
• Binary (+, -, *, /, %) and Boolean (==, !=, <, >, <=, >=) operations
• Loops (for, while), Conditional expressions (if)
• Functions

MathWorks MatLab is a good example of where I’m heading, just much simpler. The interpreter will be used as an environment to demonstrate algorithms; simple algorithms such as finding the average of a dataset/array, or slightly more complicated algorithms such as Gaussian elimination or RSA.

Best/Most practical resource I found on the subject is Ron Ayoub’s entry on Code Project (Parsing Algebraic Expressions Using the Interpreter Pattern) - a perfect example of a minified version of my problem.

The Purple Dragon Book seems to be too much, anything more practical?

The interpreter will be implemented as a .NET library, using C#. However, resources for any platform are welcome, since the design-architecture part of this problem is the most challenging.

Any practical resources?

(please avoid “this is not trivial” or “why re-invent the wheel” responses)

Answer 1

I would write it in ANTLR. Write the grammar, let ANTLR generate a C# parser. You can ANTLR ask for a parse tree, and possibly the interpreter can already operate on the parse tree. Perhaps you'll have to convert the parse tree to some more abstract internal representation (although ANTLR already allows to leave out irrelevant punctuation when generating the tree).