CS015 Compiler Construction

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 Course Information
• Instructor : Karamjit Cheema
– Office: 215
– Email: karamjit.kaur@thapar.edu

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Course Web Page: http://sites.google.com/site/thaparcs015/

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 Grading

• Midterm : 24%
• Lab Eval : 20%
• Quizzes : 16%
• Final : 40%

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 Course Outline
• Introduction to Compiling
• Lexical Analysis
• Syntax Analysis
– Context Free Grammars
– Top-Down Parsing, LL Parsing
– Bottom-Up Parsing, LR Parsing
• Syntax-Directed Translation
– Attribute Definitions
– Evaluation of Attribute Definitions
• Semantic Analysis, Type Checking
• Run-Time Organization
• Intermediate Code Generation

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 Syllabus : Part I

Introduction to Compiling:
Compilers,
Analysis of the source program,
Phases of a compiler
Compilation and interpretation.

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 How are Languages Implemented?

Two major strategies:

1. Compilers. Translate programs to a machine executable code.

2. Interpreters. Run programs “as is” without preliminary translation:

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 Interpreter
An interpreter reads the source code one instruction or line at a time, converts this
line into machine code and executes it. The machine code is then discarded and
the next line is read.

Advantages :
– Simple
– We can interrupt it while it is running, change the program and either continue or start again
– Lets the programmer know immediately when and where problems exist in the code;
Disadvantages :
Slow : every line has to be translated every time it is executed, even if it is executed many times as the
program runs.
Source code of an interpreted language cannot run without the interpreter.
Cannot perform optimizations.
Because the interpreter must be loaded into memory, there is less space available during execution; a
compiler is only loaded into memory during compilation stage, and so only the machine code is
resident in memory during run-time;
Once we have a compiled file, we can re-run it any time we want to without having to use the compiler
each time; With any interpreted language, however, we would have to re-interpret the program
each time we wanted to run it;
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 The Context of a Compiler

A compiler is a program that reads a program written in one language–the source

language–and translates it into an equivalent program in another language–the target
language.
In addition to a compiler, other programs are needed to generate an executable code.
Source Program
COMPILER
Target Assembly Program
ASSEMBLER
Relocatable Machine Code
LOADER/LINKER
Absolute Machine Code

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 History of Compilers
The first compiler was written by Grace Hopper, in 1952, for the A-0 programming
language.
The FORTRAN team led by John Backus at IBM is generally credited as having
introduced the first complete compiler, in 1957.
COBOL was an early language to be compiled on multiple architectures, in 1960.
Early compilers were written in assembly language.
The first self-hosting compiler — capable of compiling its own source code in a high-
level language — was created for Lisp by Tim Hart and Mike Levin at MIT in 1962.
Since the 1970s it has become common practice to implement a compiler in the
language it compiles, although both Pascal and C have been popular choices for
implementation language. Building a self-hosting compiler is a bootstrapping
problem—the first such compiler for a language must be compiled either by a
compiler written in a different language, or (as in Hart and Levin's Lisp compiler)
compiled by running the compiler in an interpreter.

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 Classification of Compilers
A native or hosted compiler is one whose output is intended to directly
run on the same type of computer and operating system that the
compiler itself runs on.
The output of a cross compiler is designed to run on a different platform.
A cross compiler is a compiler capable of creating executable code for a
platform other than the one on which the compiler is run. Cross
compilers are often used when developing software for embedded
systems that are not intended to support a software development
environment.

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 COMPILERS
• A compiler is a program takes a program written in a source language
and translates it into an equivalent program in a target language.

source program COMPILER target program

( Normally a program written in ( Normally the equivalent program in
a high-level programming language) machine code – relocatable object file)

error messages

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 Major Parts of Compilers
• There are two major parts of a compiler: Analysis and Synthesis

• Analyis : Machine Independent

• Synthesis : Machine Dependent

• In analysis phase, an intermediate representation is created from the

given source program.
– Lexical Analyzer, Syntax Analyzer and Semantic Analyzer are the parts of this phase.
• In synthesis phase, the equivalent target program is created from this
intermediate representation.
Intermediate Code Generator, Code Optimizer and Code Generator are the parts of this phase.

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 Phases of A Compiler

Source Lexical Syntax Semantic Intermediate Code Code Target

Program Analyzer Analyzer Analyzer Code Generator Optimizer Generator Program

• Each phase transforms the source program from one representation

into another representation.

• They communicate with error handlers.

• They communicate with the symbol table.

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 Pre-Processing Phase

1) Comments are removed from the source file.This greatly simplifies

the later stages.
2) If the language supports macros, the macros are replaced with the
equivalent text.
3) The preprocessor also handles preprocessor directives. These are
most often include statements. In C and C++, an include statement
looks like either: #include "file"
These lines are replaced by the actual file and the resulting text
processed.
The preprocessor may also replace special strings with other
characters. In C and C++, the preprocessor recognizes the \
character as an escape code, and will replace the escape sequence
with a special character.
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 Lexical Analyzer
• Lexical Analyzer reads the source program character by character and returns the
tokens of the source program.
• A token describes a pattern of characters having same meaning in the source
program. (such as identifiers, operators, keywords, numbers, delimeters and so on)
Ex: newval := oldval + 12 => tokens: newval identifier
:= assignment operator
oldval identifier
+ add operator
12 a number

• Puts information about identifiers into the symbol table.

• Regular expressions are used to describe tokens (lexical constructs).
• A (Deterministic) Finite State Automaton can be used in the implementation of a
lexical analyzer.

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 Syntax Analyzer
• A Syntax Analyzer creates the syntactic structure (generally a parse
tree) of the given program.
• A syntax analyzer is also called as a parser.
• A parse tree describes a syntactic structure.
assgstmt

identifier := expression • In a parse tree, all terminals are at leaves.

newval expression + expression • All inner nodes are non-terminals in

a context free grammar.
identifier number

oldval 12

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 Syntax Analyzer (CFG)
• The syntax of a language is specified by a context free grammar
(CFG).
• The rules in a CFG are mostly recursive.
• A syntax analyzer checks whether a given program satisfies the rules
implied by a CFG or not.
– If it satisfies, the syntax analyzer creates a parse tree for the given program.

• Ex: We use BNF (Backus Naur Form) to specify a CFG

assgstmt -> identifier := expression
expression -> identifier
expression -> number
expression -> expression + expression

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 Syntax Analyzer versus Lexical Analyzer
• Which constructs of a program should be recognized by the lexical
analyzer, and which ones by the syntax analyzer?

– Both of them do similar things; But the lexical analyzer deals with simple
non-recursive constructs of the language.
– The syntax analyzer deals with recursive constructs of the language.
– The lexical analyzer simplifies the job of the syntax analyzer.
– The lexical analyzer recognizes the smallest meaningful units (tokens) in a
source program.
– The syntax analyzer works on the smallest meaningful units (tokens) in a
source program to recognize meaningful structures in our programming
language.

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 Parsing Techniques
• Depending on how the parse tree is created, there are different parsing
techniques.
• These parsing techniques are categorized into two groups:
– Top-Down Parsing,
– Bottom-Up Parsing
• Top-Down Parsing:
– Construction of the parse tree starts at the root, and proceeds towards the leaves.
– Efficient top-down parsers can be easily constructed by hand.
– Recursive Predictive Parsing, Non-Recursive Predictive Parsing (LL Parsing).
• Bottom-Up Parsing:
– Construction of the parse tree starts at the leaves, and proceeds towards the root.
– Normally efficient bottom-up parsers are created with the help of some software tools.
– Bottom-up parsing is also known as shift-reduce parsing.
– Operator-Precedence Parsing – simple, restrictive, easy to implement
– LR Parsing – much general form of shift-reduce parsing, LR, SLR, LALR

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 Semantic Analyzer
• A semantic analyzer checks the source program for semantic errors and
collects the type information for the code generation.
• Type-checking is an important part of semantic analyzer.
• Normally semantic information cannot be represented by a context-free
language used in syntax analyzers.
• Context-free grammars used in the syntax analysis are integrated with
attributes (semantic rules)
– the result is a syntax-directed translation,
– Attribute grammars
• Ex:
newval := oldval + 12
• The type of the identifier newval must match with type of the expression (oldval+12)

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 Intermediate Code Generation
• A compiler may produce an explicit intermediate codes representing the
source program.
• These intermediate codes are generally machine (architecture independent).
But the level of intermediate codes is close to the level of machine codes.
• Ex:
newval := oldval * fact + 1

id1 := id2 * id3 + 1

MULT id2,id3,temp1 Intermediates Codes (Quadraples)

ADD temp1,#1,temp2
MOV temp2,,id1

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Code Optimizer (for Intermediate Code Generator)
• The code optimizer optimizes the code produced by the intermediate
code generator in the terms of time and space.

• Ex:

MULT id2,id3,temp1
ADD temp1,#1,id1

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 Code Generator
• Produces the target language in a specific architecture.
• The target program is normally is a relocatable object file containing
the machine codes.

• Ex:
( assume that we have an architecture with instructions whose at least one of its operands is
a machine register)

MOVE id2,R1
MULT id3,R1
ADD #1,R1
MOVE R1,id1

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 Decompiler
Translates a file containing information at a relatively low level of abstraction
(usually designed to be computer readable rather than human readable) into
a form having a higher level of abstraction (usually designed to be human
readable).
It can be used for the recovery of lost source code, and is also useful in some
cases for computer security, interoperability and error correction.

A disassembler translates an executable program into assembly language

(and an assembler could be used to assemble it back into an executable
program).

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