CS712/CS812
Compiler Design
Spring 2005
MWF 2:10-3pm, Nesmith 329

Instructor: P. Hatcher
Office: Nesmith 310A
Phone: 862-2678
E-mail: hatcher@unh.edu
Office Hours: MWF 1:30-2:00pm, Fri 3:00-4:00pm, or by appointment (send e-mail to request an appointment).

The pre-requisites for this course are CS671 and CS520.

This course has two major objectives:

• The first objective comprises the items listed in the formal course description (in the UNH course catalog). That is, you will learn how modern compilers are designed and implemented (and also about the difficulties of designing languages).

• The second objective of the course is for you to improve your software engineering skills by:
  • writing a specification;
  • designing a nontrivial system;
  • implementing a nontrivial system;
  • testing a nontrivial system; and,
  • working with program generation tools.

An outline of the material covered by this course is given here.

Grading

Tentatively, the project will consist of five phases:

1. language design - due February 13 (10%).

2. scanner and parser - due February 27 (10%).

3. semantic analysis - due March 27 (15%).

4. code generation - due April 17 (15%).

5. complete the compiler - due May 8 (20%).

Each project assignment will be worth 100 points. Project assignments may be handed in late at a penalty of 2 points for one day late, 5 points for two days late, 10 points for three days late, 20 points for four days late, and 40 points for five days late. No program may be turned in more than 5 days late. An assignment is not considered late unless turned in after 8am on the day after the due date.

The draft specification produced by students during Phase 1 is now available.

There will be three homework assignments given during the semester.

1. Homework 1 is a written assignment concerning language specification.
2. Homework 2 is a written assignment concerning LR parsing.
3. Homework 3 is a written assignment concerning LL parsing.

The rest (21%) of your course grade will be based upon a final examination. This examination will be comprehensive and will be closed book. The final exam will be Wednesday May 18 3:30-5:30pm in Nesmith 329. A sample final exam is available as a PDF file on the CIS machines in ~cs712/public/sample-final.pdf.

In summary, your course grade will be determined in the following way:

• Programming Project - 70%
• Homework - 9%
• Final Examination - 21%

Textbooks

On reserve in the Engineering, Math and Computer Science library in New Hampshire Hall:

• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
  by Aho, Sethi and Ullman

• Introduction to Compiler Construction with Unix
  by Schreiner and Friedman

• The 1989 ANSI C Standard

• Engineering a Compiler
  by Cooper and Torczon

• Lex & Yacc
  by Mason, Brown and Levine

We will use The Java Language Specification, which is available on-line.

We will be using the GNU versions of lex and yacc. There are GNU manuals for both flex and bison.

We will also use two manuals that are available from Intel:

• IA-32 Intel Architecture Software Developer's Manual, Volume 1: Basic Architecture
• IA-32 Intel Architecture Software Developer's Manual, Volume 2: Instruction Set Reference Manual

The manual for the GNU assembler will also be useful. (In particular, be aware that the syntax used by Intel differs from that used by the GNU assembler. See the relevant section of the GNU assembler manual.)

In addition, here is a guide for programming in Intel IA-32 assembler under Linux.

Finally, you will need to use gdb to debug both the compiler and the output of the compiler. The GNU manual for gdb is here. To debug at the assembly language level, read about the stepi/nexti commands, how to display registers, and the break *address command.

Computer Accounts

Comments and questions should be directed to hatcher@unh.edu