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At the end of the course you can build a compiler for a small programming language in a well structured manner, and you know and can use the required algorithms and tools. You can create a grammar for a programming language, build a parser for it, perform static analysis, create an abstract syntax tree, and generate code.
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It is important to know how compilers work because many applications actually act as a compiler: they translate input written in some language to output in some other. So, compiler construction is a basic discipline for any computer scientist.
The construction of a compiler is a natural meeting place of many computer science fields. You work with finite automata, grammars, parsers, tree structures and graphs, recursive algorithms, typing systems, code generation algorithms, to name a few.
In this course you will stepwise construct, in your own favourite language, a basic compiler for a small but representative language, SPL (Simple Programming Language). The main steps are 1) the construction of a parser for SPL which generates an abstract syntax tree; 2) the implementation of a type checker / type inferencing system for SPL; 3) a code generation for a simple stack machine.
As final project, you either choose to extend SPL with new features, or to generate code for some concrete machine architecture.
Instructional Modes
- Lecture
- Tutorial
- Self-study
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| Experience with imperative, object oriented, and functional programming languages. Language and automata theory. |
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| Subsequent exercises of 3 main topics: parsing, typing, code generation, leading to a working compiler for a small programming language. Case-study to a self-selected extension of the compiler (paper, presentation, perhaps implementation). Individual oral exam covering all material, exercises, implementation, and case-study. |
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