Compiler and Language-Processing Tools

Please register at Olat.

Organization

In the lecture, we combine self-study material (videos, lecture slides, literature) and weekly classes where we discuss the material, solve questions and get a deeper understanding of the topic.

In addition to the lecture there will be practical exercises. In the practical exercises, the topics of the lecture are put into a practical perspective by constructing a compiler from scratch. The practical exercises will not influence the final grade, however they are mandatory to be admitted to the final examination.

As this is a 8CP lecture, you should plan to spend around 240 hours on the lecture and the practical exercises. If you do not have much experience with implementing bigger projects in Java, you should plan to spend more time on the practical exercises. If you lack some of the theoretical prerequisites (definition of formal languages, regular expressions, context-free grammars, finite-state machines, pushdown automata), you should also incorporate this into your planning.

The lecture will be held in English.

Modul Handbook

Topics of the Lecture

  • Syntax specification of programming and formal languages
  • Lexical analysis: scanning, scanner generation, application of scanner generators
  • Context free analyses: parsing, parser generation, application of parser generators
  • Design and use of abstract syntax
  • Context sensitive analysis: name analysis, type analysis, attribution techniques and tools
  • Processing of XML documents
  • Compilation techniques for procedural and object-oriented languages
  • Intermediate languages for compilation
  • Semantical aspects and optimization techniques
  • Instruction selection
  • Register assignment
  • Code generation
  • Automatic memory management and garbage collection

Prerequisites:

  • Good programming knowledge in Java (or similar language)

 

Instructors