Compiler - A Compiler is a Language Translator that takes as input source program
and generates object program.
Cross Compiler
Runs on one machine and generates assembly code for another machine.
C-compiler works in 2 passes where pass 1 performs Analysis and pass 2
performs synthesis.
C- Compiler is written 80% in C-Language and 20 % in ALP Language.
Writing Compiler in its own language is called as boot strapping.
C-Compiler uses combination of recursive recent parser and operator
precedence parser.
Compilation Phases and Passes
Compilation of a program proceeds through a fixed series of phases
Each phase use an (intermediate) form of the program produced by an earlier
phase
Subsequent phases operate on lower-level code representations
Each phase may consist of a number of passes over the program
representation
Pascal, FORTRAN, C languages designed for one-pass compilation, which
explains the need for function prototypes
Single-pass compilers need less memory to operate
Java and ADA are multi-pass
Structure of compiler and phases of compiler
Lexical Analysis
The first phase of scanner works as a text scanner.
This phase scans the source code as a stream of characters and converts it
into meaningful lexemes.
This phase takes as input source program and if elements in the program are
correct, it generates some meaning full units.
Lexical analyzer represents these lexemes in the form of tokens.
Example tokens are identifiers, constants, operators, etc.
Syntax Analysis
The next phase is called the syntax analysis or parsing.
It takes the token produced by lexical analysis as input and generates a parse
tree (or syntax tree).
In this phase, token arrangements are checked against the source code
grammar, i.e. the parser checks if the expression made by the tokens is
syntactically correct.
Semantic Analysis
Semantic analysis checks whether the parse tree constructed follows the
rules of language.
For example, assignment of values is between compatible data types, and
adding string to an integer.
Also, the semantic analyzer keeps track of identifiers, their types and
expressions; whether identifiers are declared before use or not etc. The
semantic analyzer produces an annotated syntax tree as an output.
Intermediate Code Generation
After semantic analysis the compiler generates an intermediate code of the
source code for the target machine.
It represents a program for some abstract machine.
It is in between the high-level language and the machine language.
This intermediate code should be generated in such a way that it makes it
easier to be translated into the target machine code.
Code Optimization
The next phase does code optimization of the intermediate code.
Optimization can be assumed as something that removes unnecessary code
lines, and arranges the sequence of statements in order to speed up the
program execution without wasting resources (CPU, memory).
Code Generation
In this phase, the code generator takes the optimized representation of the
intermediate code and maps it to the target machine language.
The code generator translates the intermediate code into a sequence of
(generally) re-locatable machine code.
Sequence of instructions of machine code performs the task as the
intermediate code would do.
Symbol Table
It is a data-structure maintained throughout all the phases of a compiler.
All the identifier's names along with their types are stored here.
The symbol table makes it easier for the compiler to quickly search the
identifier record and retrieve it.
The symbol table is also used for scope management.
Error handling
It is responsible for handling of the errors which can occur in any of the
compilation.
