Modern Compiler Design

829 Pages·2012·4.154 MB·English

by  Dick Grune, Kees van Reeuwijk, Henri E. Bal, Ceriel J.H. Jacobs, Koen Langendoen

Dick Grune • Kees van Reeuwijk • Henri E. Bal
Ceriel J.H. Jacobs • Koen Langendoen
Modern Compiler Design
Second Edition
Dick Grune Ceriel J.H. Jacobs
Vrije Universiteit Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam, The Netherlands Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Kees van Reeuwijk Koen Langendoen
Vrije Universiteit Delft University of Technology
Amsterdam, The Netherlands Delft, The Netherlands
Henri E. Bal
Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Additional material to this book can be downloaded from http://extras.springer.com.
ISBN 978-1-4614-4698-9 ISBN 978-1-4614-4699-6 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-4699-6

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Preface
Twelve years have passed since the first edition of Modern Compiler Design. For
manycomputersciencesubjectsthiswouldbemorethanalifetime,butsincecom-
piler design is probably the most mature computer science subject, it is different.
Anadultpersondevelopsmoreslowlyanddifferentlythanatoddlerorateenager,
andsodoescompilerdesign.Thepresentbookreflectsthat.
Improvements to the book fall into two groups: presentation and content. The
‘look and feel’ of the book has been modernized, but more importantly we have
rearrangedsignificantpartsofthebooktopresenttheminamorestructuredmanner:
largechaptershavebeensplitandtheoptimizingcodegenerationtechniqueshave
been collected in a separate chapter. Based on reader feedback and experiences in
teachingfromthisbook,bothbyourselvesandothers,materialhasbeenexpanded,
clarified,modified,ordeletedinalargenumberofplaces.Wehopethatasaresult
of this the reader feels that the book does a better job of making compiler design
andconstructionaccessible.
The book adds new material to cover the developments in compiler design and
construction over the last twelve years. Overall the standard compiling techniques
and paradigms have stood the test of time, but still new and often surprising opti-
mizationtechniqueshavebeeninvented;existingoneshavebeenimproved;andold
oneshavegainedprominence.Examplesofthefirstare:proceduralabstraction,in
which routines are recognized in the code and replaced by routine calls to reduce
size; binary rewriting, in which optimizations are applied to the binary code; and
just-in-timecompilation,inwhichpartsofthecompilationaredelayedtoimprove
theperceivedspeedoftheprogram.Anexampleofthesecondisatechniquewhich
extendsoptimalcodegenerationthroughexhaustivesearch,previouslyavailablefor
tinyblocksonly,tomoderate-sizebasicblocks.Andanexampleofthethirdistail
recursionremoval,indispensableforthecompilationoffunctionallanguages.These
developmentsaremainlydescribedinChapter9.
Although syntax analysis is the one but oldest branch of compiler construction
(lexical analysis being the oldest), even in that area innovation has taken place.
Generalized(non-deterministic)LRparsing,developedbetween1984and1994,is
nowusedincompilers.ItiscoveredinSection3.5.8.
Newhardwarerequirementshavenecessitatednewcompilerdevelopments.The
mainexamplesaretheneedforsizereductionoftheobjectcode,bothtofitthecode
intosmallembeddedsystemsandtoreducetransmissiontimes;andforlowerpower
v
vi Preface
consumption,toextendbatterylifeandtoreduceelectricitybills.Dynamicmemory
allocationinembeddedsystemsrequiresabalancebetweenspeedandthrift,andthe
question is how compiler design can help. These subjects are covered in Sections
9.2,9.3,and10.2.8,respectively.
With age comes legacy. There is much legacy code around, code which is so
oldthatitcannolongerbemodifiedandrecompiledwithreasonableeffort.Ifthe
sourcecodeisstillavailablebutthereisnocompileranymore,recompilationmust
startwithagrammarofthesourcecode.Forfiftyyearsprogrammersandcompiler
designershaveusedgrammarstoproduceandanalyzeprograms;nowlargelegacy
programs are used to produce grammars for them. The recovery of the grammar
from legacy source code is discussed in Section 3.6. If just the binary executable
program is left, it must be disassembled or even decompiled. For fifty years com-
pilerdesignershavebeencalledupontodesigncompilersandassemblerstoconvert
sourceprogramstobinarycode;nowtheyarecalledupontodesigndisassemblers
and decompilers, to roll back the assembly and compilation process. The required
techniquesaretreatedinSections8.4and8.5.
Thebibliography
Theliteraturelisthasbeenupdated,butitsusefulnessismorelimitedthanbefore,
fortworeasons.Thefirstisthatbythetimeitappearsinprint,theInternetcanpro-
videmoreup-to-dateandmoreto-the-pointinformation,inlargerquantities,thana
printedtextcanhopetoachieve.Itisourcontentionthatanybodywhohasunder-
stood a larger part of the ideas explained in this book is able to evaluate Internet
informationoncompilerdesign.
The second is that many of the papers we refer to are available only to those
fortunate enough to have login facilities at an institute with sufficient budget to
obtain subscriptions to the larger publishers; they are no longer available to just
anyone who walks into a university library. Both phenomena point to paradigm
shiftswithwhichreaders,authors,publishersandlibrarianswillhavetocope.
Thestructureofthebook
Thisbookisconceptuallydividedintotwoparts.Thefirst,comprisingChapters1
through10,isconcernedwithtechniquesforprogramprocessingingeneral;itin-
cludesachapteronmemorymanagement,bothinthecompilerandinthegenerated
code. The second part, Chapters 11 through 14, covers the specific techniques re-
quiredby thevariousprogrammingparadigms. The interactionsbetween theparts
ofthebookareoutlinedintheadjacenttable.Theleftmostcolumnshowsthefour
phasesofcompilerconstruction:analysis,contexthandling,synthesis,andrun-time
systems.Chaptersinthiscolumncoverboththemanualandtheautomaticcreation
Preface vii
of the pertinent software but tend to emphasize automatic generation. The other
columns show the four paradigms covered in this book; for each paradigm an ex-
ample of a subject treated by each of the phases is shown. These chapters tend to
containmanualtechniquesonly,allautomatictechniqueshavingbeendelegatedto
Chapters2through9.
inimperative infunctional inlogic inparallel/
andobject- programs programs distributed
oriented (Chapter12) (Chapter13) programs
programs (Chapter14)
(Chapter11)
Howtodo:
analysis −− −− −− −−
(Chapters2&3)
context identifier polymorphic staticrule Lindastatic
handling identification typechecking matching analysis
(Chapters4&5)
synthesis codefor codeforlist structure marshaling
(Chapters6–9) while- comprehension unification
statement
run-time stack reduction Warren replication
systems machine Abstract
(nochapter) Machine
The scientific mind would like the table to be nice and square, with all boxes
filled —in short “orthogonal”— but we see that the top right entries are missing
andthatthereisnochapterfor“run-timesystems”intheleftmostcolumn.Thetop
right entries would cover such things as the special subjects in the program text
analysis of logic languages, but present text analysis techniques are powerful and
flexible enough and languages similar enough to handle all language paradigms:
there is nothing to be said there, for lack of problems. The chapter missing from
the leftmost column would discuss manual and automatic techniques for creating
run-timesystems.Unfortunatelythereislittleornotheoryonthissubject:run-time
systems are still crafted by hand by programmers on an intuitive basis; there is
nothingtobesaidthere,forlackofsolutions.
Chapter1introducesthereadertocompilerdesignbyexaminingasimpletradi-
tionalmodularcompiler/interpreterindetail.Severalhigh-levelaspectsofcompiler
constructionarediscussed,followedbyashorthistoryofcompilerconstructionand
introductionstoformalgrammarsandclosurealgorithms.
Chapters2and3treattheprogramtextanalysisphaseofacompiler:theconver-
sionoftheprogramtexttoanabstractsyntaxtree.Techniquesforlexicalanalysis,
lexicalidentificationoftokens,andsyntaxanalysisarediscussed.
Chapters 4 and 5 cover the second phase of a compiler: context handling. Sev-
eral methods of context handling are discussed: automated ones using attribute
grammars, manual ones using L-attributed and S-attributed grammars, and semi-
automatedonesusingsymbolicinterpretationanddata-flowanalysis.
viii Preface
Chapters6through9coverthesynthesisphaseofacompiler,coveringbothin-
terpretationandcodegeneration.Thechaptersoncodegenerationaremainlycon-
cernedwithmachinecodegeneration;theintermediatecoderequiredforparadigm-
specificconstructsistreatedinChapters11through14.
Chapter10concernsmemorymanagementtechniques,bothforuseinthecom-
pilerandinthegeneratedprogram.
Chapters11through14addressthespecialproblemsincompilingforthevarious
paradigms–imperative,object-oriented,functional,logic,andparallel/distributed.
Compilers for imperative and object-oriented programs are similar enough to be
treatedtogetherinonechapter,Chapter11.
Appendix B contains hints and answers to a selection of the exercises in the
book. Such exercises are marked by a (cid:2) followed the page number on which the
answerappears.AlargersetofanswerscanbefoundonSpringer’sInternetpage;
thecorrespondingexercisesaremarkedby(cid:2)www.
Severalsubjectsinthisbookaretreatedinanon-traditionalway,andsomewords
ofjustificationmaybeinorder.
Lexicalanalysisisbasedonthesamedotteditemsthataretraditionallyreserved
for bottom-up syntax analysis, rather than on Thompson’s NFA construction. We
see the dotted item as the essential tool in bottom-up pattern matching, unifying
lexicalanalysis,LRsyntaxanalysis,bottom-upcodegenerationandpeep-holeop-
timization.Thetraditionallexicalalgorithmsarejustlow-levelimplementationsof
itemmanipulation.Weconsiderthedifferenttreatmentoflexicalandsyntaxanaly-
sistobeahistoricalartifact.Also,thedifferencebetweenthelexicalandthesyntax
levelstendstodisappearinmodernsoftware.
Considerable attention is being paid to attribute grammars, in spite of the fact
thattheirimpactoncompilerdesignhasbeenlimited.Yettheyaretheonlyknown
way of automating context handling, and we hope that the present treatment will
helptolowerthethresholdoftheirapplication.
Functionsasfirst-classdataarecoveredinmuchgreaterdepthinthisbookthanis
usualincompilerdesignbooks.AfteragoodstartinAlgol60,functionslostmuch
status as manipulatable data in languages like C, Pascal, and Ada, although Ada
95 rehabilitated them somewhat. The implementation of some modern concepts,
for example functional and logic languages, iterators, and continuations, however,
requires functions to be manipulated as normal data. The fundamental aspects of
the implementation are covered in the chapter on imperative and object-oriented
languages;specificsaregiveninthechaptersonthevariousotherparadigms.
Additionalmaterial,including moreanswers toexercises,and alldiagrams and
allcodefromthebook,areavailablethroughSpringer’sInternetpage.
Useasacoursebook
Thebookcontainsfartoomuchmaterialforacompilerdesigncourseof13lectures
of two hours each, as given at our university, so a selection has to be made. An
Preface ix
introductory,moretraditionalcoursecanbeobtainedbyincluding,forexample,
Chapter1;
Chapter2upto2.7;2.10;2.11;Chapter3upto3.4.5;3.5upto3.5.7;
Chapter4upto4.1.3;4.2.1upto4.3;Chapter5upto5.2.2;5.3;
Chapter6;Chapter7upto9.1.1;9.1.4upto9.1.4.4;7.3;
Chapter10upto10.1.2;10.2upto10.2.4;
Chapter11upto11.2.3.2;11.2.4upto11.2.10;11.4upto11.4.2.3.
AmoreadvancedcoursewouldincludeallofChapters1to11,possiblyexclud-
ingChapter4.ThiscouldbeaugmentedbyoneofChapters12to14.
Anadvancedcoursewouldskipmuchoftheintroductorymaterialandconcen-
trateonthepartsomittedintheintroductorycourse,Chapter4andallofChapters
10to14.
Acknowledgments
Weowemanythankstothefollowingpeople,whosupplieduswithhelp,remarks,
wishes, and food for thought for this Second Edition: Ingmar Alting, José Fortes,
BertHuijben,JonathanJoubert,SaraKalvala,FrankLippes,PaulS.Moulson,Pras-
antK.Patra,CarloPerassi,MarcoRossi,MoolySagiv,GertJanSchoneveld,Ajay
Singh,EvertWattel,andFreekZindel.Theirinputrangedfromsimplecorrectionsto
detailedsuggestionstomassivecriticism.SpecialthanksgotoStefanieScherzinger,
whose thorough and thoughtful criticism of our outline code format induced us to
improveitconsiderably;anyremainingimperfectionsshouldbeattributedtostub-
bornnessonthepartoftheauthors.Thepresentationoftheprogramcodesnippets
in the book profited greatly from Carsten Heinz’s listings package; we thank
himformakingthepackageavailabletothepublic.
WearegratefultoAnnKostant,MelissaFearon,andCourtneyClarkofSpringer
US,who,throughfastandcompetentwork,haveclearedmanyobstaclesthatstood
in the way of publishing this book. We thank them for their effort and pleasant
cooperation.
WemournthedeathofIrinaAthanasiu,whodidnotlivelongenoughtolendher
expertiseinembeddedsystemstothisbook.
We thank the Faculteit der Exacte Wetenschappen of the Vrije Universiteit for
theirsupportandtheuseoftheirequipment.
Amsterdam, DickGrune
March2012 KeesvanReeuwijk
HenriE.Bal
CerielJ.H.Jacobs
Delft, KoenG.Langendoen
x Preface
AbridgedPrefacetotheFirstEdition(2000)
In the 1980s and 1990s, while the world was witnessing the rise of the PC and
the Internet on the front pages of the daily newspapers, compiler design methods
developedwithlessfanfare,developmentsseenmainlyinthetechnicaljournals,and
–moreimportantly–inthecompilersthatareusedtoprocesstoday’ssoftware.These
developments were driven partly by the advent of new programming paradigms,
partly by a better understanding of code generation techniques, and partly by the
introductionoffastermachineswithlargeamountsofmemory.
The field of programming languages has grown to include, besides the tradi-
tionalimperativeparadigm,theobject-oriented,functional,logical,andparallel/dis-
tributed paradigms, which inspire novel compilation techniques and which often
requiremoreextensiverun-timesystemsthandoimperativelanguages.BURStech-
niques(Bottom-UpRewritingSystems)haveevolvedintoverypowerfulcodegen-
erationtechniqueswhichcopesuperblywiththecomplexmachineinstructionsets
ofpresent-daymachines.Andthespeedandmemorysizeofmodernmachinesallow
compilationtechniquesandprogramminglanguagefeaturesthatwereunthinkable
before.Moderncompilerdesignmethodsmeetthesechallengeshead-on.
Theaudience
Ouraudiencearestudentswithenoughexperiencetohaveatleastusedacompiler
occasionallyandtohavegivensomethoughttotheconceptofcompilation.When
thesestudentsleavetheuniversity,theywillhavetobefamiliarwithlanguagepro-
cessorsforeachofthemodernparadigms,usingmoderntechniques.Althoughcur-
riculum requirements in many universities may have been lagging behind in this
respect, graduates entering the job market cannot afford to ignore these develop-
ments.
Experiencehasshownusthataconsiderablenumberoftechniquestraditionally
taughtincompilerconstructionarespecialcasesofmorefundamentaltechniques.
Oftenthesespecialtechniquesworkforimperativelanguagesonly;thefundamental
techniqueshaveamuchwiderapplication.Anexampleisthestackasanoptimized
representationforactivationrecordsinstrictlylast-in-first-outlanguages.Therefore,
thisbook
• focusesonprinciplesandtechniquesofwideapplication,carefullydistinguish-
ing between the essential (= material that has a high chance of being useful to
the student) and the incidental (= material that will benefit the student only in
exceptionalcases);
• providesafirstlevelofimplementationdetailsandoptimizations;
• augmentstheexplanationsbypointersforfurtherstudy.
Thestudent,afterhavingfinishedthebook,canexpectto:
Preface xi
• haveobtainedathoroughunderstandingoftheconceptsofmoderncompilerde-
signandconstruction,andsomefamiliaritywiththeirpracticalapplication;
• beabletostartparticipatingintheconstructionofalanguageprocessorforeach
ofthemodernparadigmswithaminimaltrainingperiod;
• beabletoreadtheliterature.
Thefirsttwoprovideafirmbasis;thethirdprovidespotentialforgrowth.
Acknowledgments
Weowemanythankstothefollowingpeople,whowerewillingtospendtimeand
effort on reading drafts of our book and to supply us with many useful and some-
timesverydetailedcomments:MirjamBakker,RaoulBhoedjang,WilfredDittmer,
ThomerM.Gil,BenN.Hasnai,BertHuijben,JacoA.Imthorn,JohnRomein,Tim
Rühl, and the anonymous reviewers. We thank Ronald Veldema for the Pentium
codesegments.
WearegratefultoSimonPlumtree,GaynorRedvers-Mutton,DawnBooth,and
Jane Kerr of John Wiley & Sons Ltd, for their help and encouragement in writing
this book. Lambert Meertens kindly provided information on an older ABC com-
piler,andRalphGriswoldonanIconcompiler.
We thank the Faculteit Wiskunde en Informatica (now part of the Faculteit der
Exacte Wetenschappen) of the Vrije Universiteit for their support and the use of
theirequipment.
DickGrune
[email protected],http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick
HenriE.Bal
[email protected],http://www.cs.vu.nl/~bal
CerielJ.H.Jacobs
[email protected],http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ceriel
KoenG.Langendoen
[email protected],http://pds.twi.tudelft.nl/~koen
Amsterdam,May2000