This book is based on lecture notes I have used for my classes about compilers and related computer science topics, such as the automata theory, at various American, European and Japanese universities over the past three decades. Notes made at the Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan, the National Taiwan University, and the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina were particularly helpful. Nine years, I taught compiler writing at the University of Missouri—Columbia in the USA back in the 1990’s, and since 2000, I have taught this subject at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic. The lecture notes I wrote at these two universities underlie all this book, and I have greatly benefited from conversations with many colleagues and students there. Writing this book was supported by the GACR 201/07/0005 and MSM 0021630528 grants.
My special thanks go to Erzsebet Csuhaj-Varju, Jan Hrouzek, Masami Ito, Miroslav Novotný, Dušan Kolář, Jan Lipowski, and Hsu-Chun Yen for fruitful discussions about compilers and related topics, such as formal languages and their automata. Roman Lukáš carefully read and verified the mathematical passages of this book, and his comments were invaluable. This book would be hardly possible without Zbyněk Křivka, whose help was enormous during its preparation. I am also grateful to Andrea Demby, Jessica Vakili, and John Wyzalek at Taylor and Francis for an excellent editorial and production work. Finally, I thank my wife Ivana for her support and, even more importantly, love.