How to write a parser in C?

Given a MAKEFILE design the data structure that a parser would create and then write code that iterates over that data structure executing commands if needed?

• Answer:

  MAKEFILE is used when compiling large CPP projects for faster compilation. When you change a single file, only this file can be recompiled instead of everything. It comprises of 3 components: target, dependencies and system commands. Based on a time stamp the compiler recompiles the target. If in case one of its dependencies is also a target, and has a more recent time stamp, this dependency is recompiled before the actual target specified as the first argument. Therefore if you consider this as a tree and each node has its children as its dependencies, then a post order traversal will accomplish our task. While traversing each node the corresponding dependency can be recompiled if its time stamp is higher than its parent.