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Compiler Construction
Lecturer: Professor A. Mycroft
No. of lectures: 18
This course is a prerequisite for Optimising Compilers (Part II).
Aims
This course aims to cover the main technologies associated with compiling programming languages, viz. lexical analysis, syntax analysis, type checking, run-time data organisation and code-generation.
Lectures
- Survey of execution mechanisms.
The spectrum of interpreters and compilers; compile-time and run-time.
Structure of a simple compiler. Java virtual machine (JVM), JIT.
Simple run-time structures (stacks).
Structure of interpreters for result of each stage of compilation
(tokens, tree, bytecode).
[3 lectures]
- Lexical analysis and syntax analysis.
Regular expressions and finite state machine implementations.
Phrase Structured Grammars.
Chomsky classification.
Parsing algorithms: recursive descent and SLR(k)/LALR(k).
Syntax error recovery.
Abstract syntax tree; expressions, declarations and commands.
[3 lectures]
- Simple type-checking.
Type of an expression determined by type of subexpressions;
inserting coercions.
[1 lecture]
- Translation phase.
Intermediate code design.
Translation of expressions, commands and declarations.
[2 lectures]
- Code generation.
Typical machine codes.
Code generation from intermediate code.
Simple peephole optimisation.
[1 lecture]
- Compiler compilers.
Compiler compilers.
Summary of Lex and Yacc.
[1 lecture]
- Object Modules and Linkers.
Resolving external references.
Static and dynamic linking.
[1 lecture]
- Non-local variable references
Lambda-calculus as prototype.
Problems with rec and class variables.
Environments, function values are closures.
Static and Dynamic Binding (Scoping).
Landin's principle of correspondence.
[2 lectures]
- Machine implementation of a selection of interesting things. Free variable treatment, static and dynamic chains, ML free variables, closure conversion. Argument passing mechanisms. Objects and inheritance; implementation of methods. Labels, goto and exceptions. Dynamic and static typing, polymorphism. Storage allocation, garbage collection. [4 lectures]
Objectives
At the end of the course students should understand the overall structure of a compiler, and will know significant details of a number of important techniques commonly used. They will be aware of the way in which language features raise challenges for compiler builders.
Recommended reading
* Appel, A. (1997). Modern compiler implementation in Java/C/ML (3 editions). Cambridge University Press.
Aho, A.V., Sethi, R. & Ullman, J.D. (1986). Compilers: principles, techniques and tools. Addison-Wesley.
Bennett, J.P. (1990). Introduction to compiling techniques: a first course using ANSI C, LEX and YACC. McGraw-Hill.
Bornat, R. (1979). Understanding and writing compilers. Macmillan.
Fischer, C.N. & LeBlanc, J. Jr (1988). Crafting a compiler. Benjamin/Cummings.
Watson, D. (1989). High-level languages and their compilers. Addison-Wesley.




Next: Computation Theory Up: Lent Term 2008 Previous: Bioinformatics Contents