Interpreter Pattern

2023-08-03

Recently I used the Interpreter Pattern in my Math Language project and I thought it was interesting, so I made a presentation about it.

The Interpreter Pattern is mostly used to interpret (you guessed it) complex languages. It could be used to implement a programming language, similar to what I used it for, or a query language like SQL. In general, the Interpreter Pattern can be used to interpret any language that has dynamic structure. For example, something like a .csv (Comma Separated Value) file wouldn't need to be interpreted using the Interpreter Pattern because the structure is completely static (you just read the values after each comma). But something like a programming language where there could be any number of nests would use the Interpreter Pattern.

The real value of the Interpreter Pattern comes with generating a tree structure of the nodes. The pattern makes it very easy to create an Abstract Syntax Tree which evaluates a collection of nodes.