Bootstraping compilers ?

Hello all,

I am wondering if a compiler should always be able to compile
itself. gcc for example seems to do it, but is this good practice or
should this always happen?

My guess is that this is definitely not necessary. Imagine developing
a compiler for C99 written in C89. In this case, we would have a C99
compiler not able to compile itself, right? [given that I don't think
that C89 is a subset of C90]

Cheers,

--
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at soton.ac.uk
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm
PhD Student @[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ECS
University of Southampton, UK
[Considering that a fair number of compilers aren't written in the
language they compile, it's hard to see how it could be mandatory.  On
the other hand, for compilers written in their own source language,
the compiler is often the first non-trivial set of source code used to
test it.  On the third hand, read this Ken Thompson classic
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
-John]