BSc: Compilers Construction

Compiler Construction

• Course name: Compiler Construction
• Code discipline: n/a
• Subject area: Programming Languages and Software Engineering

Short Description

This course covers the following concepts: Overall compilation architecture; Lexical analysis; Syntax analysis; Semantic analysis; Code generation; Program optimization; Virtual machines and JIT technology.

Course Topics

Course Sections and Topics

Section	Topics within the section
Introduction to compilers and compiler construction	Basic notions: source and target languages, target architecture, compilation phases. The history of languages and compiler development. Typical compiler examples. Compilation & interpretation. Virtual machines, JIT & AOT technologies. Hybrid modes.
Lexical, syntax and semantic analyses	Compilation pipeline & compilation data structures Lexical analysis and deterministic state automata Bottom-up and top-down parsing Principles of semantic analysis
Code generation, optimization and virtual machines	Low-level code generation: machine instructions, assembly language Virtual machines’ architecture and their byte codes. The notion of language projections. Introduction to optimization techniques.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

What is the main purpose of this course?

The software development process and the depth of programming cannot be understood without a detailed analysis of the compilation process, from the lexical analysis to the syntactical and semantic analysis up to code generation and optimization, and without understanding both strength and limitation of this process. This course dig deeper into this topic building on the fundamental notions studied in theoretical computer science of which is the natural continuation. The typical compiler pipeline will be studied and a project will allow students to practice with the relevant tools.

ILOs defined at three levels

Level 1: What concepts should a student know/remember/explain?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to ...

• Understanding in depth the compilation process
• Realizing the limits of the process and of Semantic Analysis
• Read and write grammars for programming language constructs
• Perform lexical analysis and use lexical analyzer generators
• Perform top-down parsing, bottom-up parsing and use parser generators
• Perform semantic analysis

Level 2: What basic practical skills should a student be able to perform?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to ...

• How to design and develop compilers and language-related tools.
• The contents of each phase of the compilation process.
• How integrate compilers into an IDE.
• How to design a virtual machine for a language.

Level 3: What complex comprehensive skills should a student be able to apply in real-life scenarios?

By the end of the course, the students should be able to ...

• To be able to develop a language compiler.

Grading

Course grading range

Grade	Range	Description of performance
A. Excellent	85-100	-
B. Good	75-84	-
C. Satisfactory	60-75	-
D. Poor	0-59	-

Course activities and grading breakdown

Activity Type	Percentage of the overall course grade
Labs/seminar classes	40
Interim performance assessment	40
Exams	30

Resources, literature and reference materials

Open access resources

• Alfred V.Aho, Monica S.Lam, Ravi Sethi, Jeffrey D. Ullman. Compilers. Principles, Techniques, & Tools, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2007, ISBN 0-321-48681-1.
• N. Wirth, Compiler Construction, Addison-Wesley, 1996, ISBN 0-201-40353-6
• http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf, 2005

Teaching Methodology: Methods, techniques, & activities

Activities and Teaching Methods

Activities within each section

Learning Activities	Section 1	Section 2	Section 3
Development of individual parts of software product code	1	1	1
Homework and group projects	1	1	1
Oral polls	1	0	0
Discussions	1	1	0
Reports	0	1	0

Formative Assessment and Course Activities

Ongoing performance assessment

Section 1

Activity Type	Content	Is Graded?
Question	What is compilation process?	1
Question	What’s the difference between compiler and interpreter?	1
Question	How to compile a program?	0
Question	How to run a program?	0
Question	How to debug a program?	0

Section 2

Activity Type	Content	Is Graded?
Question	Abstract syntax tree & symbol tables: what is it for and how create and manage them?	1
Question	How to organize communication between compilation phases?	1
Question	What are basic differences between bottom-up and top-down parsing?	1
Question	How to implement a hash function for a symbol table?	0
Question	How to write a grammar for an expression using YACC/Bison tool?	0

Section 3

Activity Type	Content	Is Graded?
Question	What’s the difference between assembly and machine instructions?	1
Question	What’s the similarities and differences between real target platforms and virtual machines?	1
Question	Explain some of widely used approaches for optimizing program source code? How these approaches can be implemented in a compiler?	1
Question	Explain the idea behind the notion of control flow graph.	0
Question	What is “basic block” in CFG and what is it for?	0

Final assessment

Section 1

1. What are significant phases of a compilation process?
2. Why do we need optimization phase?
3. What’s the difference between syntax and semantic analyses?

Section 2

1. Characterize the principles of top-down and bottom-up parsing.
2. Explain how a symbol table can be implemented.
3. AST: is it a tree or a graph? What’s about semantic attributes in an AST?

Section 3

1. Give some simple examples of language-code projections.
2. How the object code for an expression can be optimized?
3. How to avoid tail recursion while optimizing code?

The retake exam

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3