very simple compiler

Please take also this tool into consideration:

ANTLR[^]

There is a C# version available on the download site:

ANTLR download[^]

Caution commercial product: This one is pretty easy to handle even for beginners. My sister could do it and she isn't even a programmer/developer:
ProGrammar[^]


This tool is great for small DSLs or also for bigger languages. It does however take a bit of studying the documentation and the samples. Having seen a grammar specification before would also come in handy.

Best regards,
Manfred

You can start by looking at http://www.antlr.org/[^]

and

http://boost-spirit.com/home/[^]

Antlr is a parser generator, with lots of extra goodies. Generates code for java, c#, c, and other programming laguages.

boost spirit allows you to define your parser directly in C++, using constructs that closely resembles Extended Backus–Naur Form.

compilation involves parsing as the first step towards code generation.

parse programming language, possibly optimize, generate machine code - or possibly other stuff ...

Regards
Espen Harlinn

If you want to learn how to build a simple compiler (without using tools) then "Let's build a compiler, by Jack Crenshaw"[^] may be a worthy reading.
:)