Question

Do you know a good, concise (not a book, possibly free documentation) reference that explains the basics of how a c++ compiler works? I think it’d be beneficial for better understanding some rules of c++ programming.

Answer 1

GCC Internals free ebook.

The purpose of this book is to address
the demands of GCC hackers. We start
with a description of GCC 3.4.1
architecture focusing on the source
code parser. We chose this version of
GCC because we used this version
mostly. Then we address the problem of
extension development. We present the
GCC Extensibility Modules (GEM)
project in the next chapter. GEM
provides a number of hooks throughout
GCC source code. It is implemented as
a patch to GCC. A GEM-based compiler
extension is developed as a
stand-alone program. When the
extension is completed, only its
source code is distributed compared
with distributing the source code of
the GCC if GEM is not used. We give
examples that demonstrate GEM
programming at the end of the book.

(EDIT: Sorry, I missed you don’t want a book. But I still think this is great resource of information you are looking for. You certainly don’t need to read it as a whole, you can go only through the sections you are interested in.)