Overview of Compilation¶
1.1 Introduction¶
Why Study Compiler Construction¶
A good compiler contains a microcosm of computer science. It makes practical use of greedy algorithms (register allocation), heuristic search techniques (list scheduling), graph algorithms (dead-code elimination), dynamic programming (instruction selection), finite automata and push-down automata (scanning and parsing), and fixed-point algorithms (data-flow analysis). It deals with problems such as dynamic allocation, synchronization, naming, locality, memory hierarchy management, and pipeline scheduling. Few software systems bring together as many complex and diverse components.
Working inside a compiler provides practical experience in software engineering that is hard to obtain with smaller, less intricate systems.
The Fundamental Principles of Compilation¶
- The compiler must preserve the meaning of the program being compiled.
- The compiler must improve the input program in some discernible way.
1.3.1 The Front End¶
Checking Syntax¶
The first step in understanding the syntax of this sentence is to identify distinct words in the input program and to classify each word with a part of speech. In a compiler, this task falls to a pass called the scanner. The scanner takes a stream of characters and converts it to a stream of classified words—that is, pairs of the form (p,s), where p is the word’s part of speech and s is its spelling.
The process of automatically finding derivations is called parsing.