In this third edition of his classic title, Leland Beck provides a complete introduction to the design and implementation of various types of system software. A core text for undergraduate/graduate software students, it stresses on the relationship between system software and the architecture of the machine it is designed to support, presenting the fundamental concepts of each type of software lucidly. Salient Features Updated architecture & Software examples, including the Intel x86 family, IBM PowerPC, Sun SPARC, CRAY T3E Introduction to object-oriented programming & design New material on finite automata & shift-reduce parsing Exercises at the end of each chapter Background