Compiler Design

Stack allocations are often restrictive and we may want resizable arrays which can survive function invocations and therefore programming languages allow use of heaps also called dynamic memory allocation. In this article we discuss heap allocation in compilers.

Stack allocation is a run-time storage management mechanism where by activation records are pushed and popped onto the stack as they begin and end. In this article we discuss stack allocation, activation trees, records, calling sequences and variable-length data on the stack.

Although scheduling and selection of registers during execution assume infinite number of registers, processors only have a limited number of registers, in this article we take a look how variables are mapped onto registers.

Functions are an important abstraction mechanism in many programming languages. In this article we discuss how functions are implemented in compilers.

Running a program with functional languages is seen as applying a function to the input which results in output. In this article we discuss functional programs from a compilers view point.

Intermediate representations is the code representation used by the compiler internally to represent source code, In this article we have discussed 6 representations and some of their properties each an improvement of the previous.

Parallel systems solve solves given problems as fast as possible by utilizing multiple processors. In this article we discuss five models for parallel programming and how they are expressed in parallel programming languages.

A compiler performs checks to ensure certain types of errors during programming are detected and reported, type checking will ensure the compiler follows the semantic and syntactic conversions of the source language.

Assembly language enables programmers to write human readable code that is close to machine language hence providing full control over the tasks the computer performs. In this article we discuss the ARM processor architecture assembly language

Assembly language enables programmers to write human readable code that is close to machine language hence providing full control over the tasks the computer performs. In this article we discuss the x86 processor architecture assembly language.

In this article we discuss garbage collection, a mechanism that is performed by the garbage collector which reclaims memory that it can prove is not used.

Memory management is the process responsible for handing out blocks of memory to a program and reclaiming unused blocks. In this article we discuss the basics of memory allocation, optimizing memory allocation and applications in a compiler.

Int this article we discuss the lex, a tool responsible for translating a sequence of regular expressions given as input into a C implementation corresponding to a finite state machine.

A combination of per-processors, compilers, assemblers, loader and linker work together to transform high level code in machine code for execution. In this article we discuss the function of each part of this system.

During the 3rd phase of compiler design, the semantic analysis phase, the semantic analyzer uses information stored in a syntax tree and symbol table to check source code semantic consistency according to the provided language definition.

During the first phase of a compiler, a lexical analyzer is used to scan the input and identify tokens. We can either hand code a lexical analyzer or use a lex program to automatically generate one. In this article we discuss how the lexical analyzer is designed to perform its function.

In this article, we discuss two compiler optimizations (Constant Folding and Constant Propagation) which enable the compiler to produce high performance and efficient assembly code.

In this article, we discuss the second phase in compiler design where written code is evaluated for correctness.