bfcc

Brainfuck (Overly)Complicated Compiler. A compiler + interpreter for Brainfuck that builds an IR, emits x86_64 assembly, and drives clang to produce a Windows executable.

Features

• Interpreter mode for quick runs.
• Native build mode via clang on Windows (x86_64).
• Optional IR dump and simple optimizations.

Build

Prereqs:

• CMake 3.25+
• C++23 compiler
• clang in PATH (required for bfcc build)
• Git submodules initialized (Boost)

Commands:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/luki446/bfcc
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
cmake --build build

Binary location depends on the generator. Common locations:

• build/bfcc.exe (single-config)
• build/Release/bfcc.exe (multi-config)

Run

Interpreter mode:

.\bfcc run examples/mandelbrot.bf

Build an executable and run it:

.\bfcc build examples/mandelbrot.bf -o mandelbrot
.\mandelbrot.exe

Helpful flags:

• --list-targets to see available targets
• --emit-ir to print the IR
• -O to enable optimizations
• -v for verbose build info

Performance

On the Mandelbrot example, the compiled binary runs about 24x faster than the interpreter:

> hyperfine '.\bfcc run ../examples/mandelbrot.bf' '.\mandelbrot.exe'
Benchmark 1: .\bfcc run ../examples/mandelbrot.bf
  Time (mean +/- sigma):     15.816 s +/- 0.040 s    [User: 15.448 s, System: 0.132 s]
  Range (min ... max):       15.738 s ... 15.864 s    10 runs

Benchmark 2: .\mandelbrot.exe
  Time (mean +/- sigma):     655.7 ms +/- 3.1 ms    [User: 624.1 ms, System: 15.0 ms]
  Range (min ... max):       651.9 ms ... 659.9 ms    10 runs

Summary
  .\mandelbrot.exe ran
   24.12 +/- 0.13 times faster than .\bfcc run ../examples/mandelbrot.bf