Study guide for the Compiler Comprehensive Examination

Topics:

• The role of a compiler and how it is similar/different from an interpreter/assembler
• The phases of a compiler including input/output and description of each phase
• Lexical analysis (Scanning)
  • Finite-State-Automata
  • Regular Expressions
• Grammars (CFG, BNF, derivations, ambiguity, hierarchy, ...)
• Parsing: Top-down vs. Bottom-up and parse-trees
• Top-down Parsing
  • Recursive Descent Parsers
  • Table-driven Parsers
  • LL (1) Grammars and Parsers
  • LL (k) Parsing
• Bottom-up Parsing
  • Shift-Reduce parsers
  • Operator-precedence parser
  • LR parsers
• Syntax-Directed translation
• Intermediate representations and Code generation
• Symbol tables, variable access, displays, lambda-lifting
• Storage management
• Semantic processing: declaration, variables, types, expressions, simple control structures
• Semantic processing: procedures
• Optimization
• Code generation
• Compiler generator tools--Lex, Yacc, .. etc.
• Dataflow analysis
• Register allocation: Sethi-Ullman

References:

• Appel. Modern Compiler Implementation in Java
• Fischer and LeBlanc (1991). Crafting a Compiler with C
• Fischer and LeBlanc (1988). Crafting a Compiler
• Aho, Sethi, and Ullman (1988) Compilers Principles, Techniques, and Tools
• Parsons (1992) Intro to Compiler Construction