Modern Compiler

Implementation
in Java
Basic Techniques

ANDREW W. APPEL
Princeton University

Preliminary edition of Modern Compiler Implementation in Java

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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c Andrew W. Appel, 1997

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First published 1997

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0-521-58275-X Modern Compiler Implementation in ML: Basic Techniques (hardback)

0-521-58775-1 Modern Compiler Implementation in ML: Basic Techniques (paperback)
0-521-58387-X Modern Compiler Implementation in Java: Basic Techniques (hardback)
0-521-58654-2 Modern Compiler Implementation in Java: Basic Techniques (paperback)
0-521-58389-6 Modern Compiler Implementation in C: Basic Techniques (hardback)
0-521-58653-4 Modern Compiler Implementation in C: Basic Techniques (paperback)
Contents

Preface ix

Part I Fundamentals of Compilation

1 Introduction 3
1.1 Modules and interfaces 4
1.2 Tools and software 5
1.3 Data structures for tree languages 7

2 Lexical Analysis 16
2.1 Lexical tokens 17
2.2 Regular expressions 18
2.3 Finite automata 21
2.4 Nondeterministic finite automata 24
2.5 JavaLex: a lexical analyzer generator 31

3 Parsing 40
3.1 Context-free grammars 42
3.2 Predictive parsing 47
3.3 LR parsing 57
3.4 Using parser generators 68

4 Abstract Syntax 80
4.1 Semantic actions 80
4.2 Abstract parse trees 87

5 Semantic Analysis 99
5.1 Symbol tables 99
5.2 Bindings for the Tiger compiler 107
5.3 Type-checking expressions 110

v
 CONTENTS

5.4 Type-checking declarations 114

6 Activation Records 120

6.1 Stack frames 122
6.2 Frames in the Tiger compiler 130

7 Translation to Intermediate Code 144

7.1 Intermediate representation trees 145
7.2 Translation into trees 148
7.3 Declarations 164

8 Basic Blocks and Traces 169

8.1 Canonical trees 170
8.2 Taming conditional branches 176

9 Instruction Selection 181

9.1 Algorithms for instruction selection 184
9.2 CISC machines 192
9.3 Instruction selection for the Tiger compiler 195

10 Liveness Analysis 207

10.1 Solution of dataflow equations 209
10.2 Liveness in the Tiger compiler 217

11 Register Allocation 223

11.1 Coloring by simplification 224
11.2 Coalescing 227
11.3 Graph coloring implementation 232
11.4 Register allocation for trees 241

12 Putting It All Together 249

Part II Advanced Topics

13 Garbage Collection 257

13.1 Mark-and-sweep collection 257
13.2 Reference counts 262
13.3 Copying collection 264
13.4 Generational collection 269

vi
CONTENTS

13.5 Incremental collection 271

13.6 Baker’s algorithm 274
13.7 Interface to the compiler 275

14 Object-oriented Languages 283

14.1 Classes 283
14.2 Single inheritance of data fields 286
14.3 Multiple inheritance 288
14.4 Testing class membership 290
14.5 Private fields and methods 293
14.6 Classless languages 294
14.7 Optimizing object-oriented programs 295

15 Functional Programming Languages 299

15.1 A simple functional language 300
15.2 Closures 302
15.3 Immutable variables 303
15.4 Inline expansion 309
15.5 Closure conversion 315
15.6 Efficient tail recursion 318
15.7 Lazy evaluation 320

16 Dataflow Analysis 333

16.1 Intermediate representation for flow analysis 334
16.2 Various dataflow analyses 337
16.3 Transformations using dataflow analysis 341
16.4 Speeding up dataflow analysis 343
16.5 Alias analysis 351

17 Loop Optimizations 359

17.1 Dominators 362
17.2 Loop-invariant computations 365
17.3 Induction variables 369
17.4 Array bounds checks 374
17.5 Loop unrolling 378

Appendix: Tiger Language Reference Manual 381

A.1 Lexical issues 381
A.2 Declarations 381

vii
 CONTENTS

A.3 Variables and expressions 384

A.4 Standard library 388

Bibliography 389

Index 393

viii
Preface

Over the past decade, there have been several shifts in the way compilers are
built. New kinds of programming languages are being used: object-oriented
languages with dynamic methods, functional languages with nested scope and
first-class function closures; and many of these languages require garbage
collection. New machines have large register sets and a high penalty for
memory access, and can often run much faster with compiler assistance in
scheduling instructions and managing instructions and data for cache locality.
This book is intended as a textbook for a one-semester or two-quarter course
in compilers. Students will see the theory behind different components of a
compiler, the programming techniques used to put the theory into practice,
and the interfaces used to modularize the compiler. To make the interfaces and
programming examples clear and concrete, I have written them in the Java
programming language. Other editions of this book are available that use the
C and ML languages.
The “student project compiler” that I have outlined is reasonably simple,
but is organized to demonstrate some important techniques that are now in
common use: Abstract syntax trees to avoid tangling syntax and semantics,
separation of instruction selection from register allocation, sophisticated copy
propagation to allow greater flexibility to earlier phases of the compiler, and
careful containment of target-machine dependencies to one module.
This book, Modern Compiler Implementation in Java: Basic Techniques,
is the preliminary edition of a more complete book to be published in 1998,
entitled Modern Compiler Implementation in Java. That book will have a
more comprehensive set of exercises in each chapter, a “further reading”
discussion at the end of every chapter, and another dozen chapters on advanced
material not in this edition, such as parser error recovery, code-generator
generators, byte-code interpreters, static single-assignment form, instruction

ix
 PREFACE

scheduling and software pipelining, parallelization techniques, and cache-

locality optimizations such as prefetching, blocking, instruction-cache layout,
and branch prediction.

Exercises. Each of the chapters in Part I has a programming exercise corre-

sponding to one module of a compiler. Unlike many “student project com-
pilers” found in textbooks, this one has a simple but sophisticated back end,
allowing good register allocation to be done after instruction selection. Soft-
ware useful for the programming exercises can be found at

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/˜appel/modern/

There are also pencil and paper exercises in each chapter; those marked with a
star * are a bit more challenging, two-star problems are difficult but solvable,
and the occasional three-star exercises are not known to have a solution.

Acknowledgments. Several people have provided constructive criticism, course-

tested the manuscript, or helped in other ways in the production of this book.
I would like to thank Stephen Bailey, Maia Ginsburg, David Hanson, Elma
Lee Noah, Todd Proebsting, Barbara Ryder, Amr Sabry, Zhong Shao, Mary
Lou Soffa, Andrew Tolmach, and Kwangkeun Yi.

x
PART ONE
Fundamentals of
Compilation
1
Introduction

A compiler was originally a program that “compiled”

subroutines [a link-loader]. When in 1954 the combina-
tion “algebraic compiler” came into use, or rather into
misuse, the meaning of the term had already shifted into
the present one.
Bauer and Eickel [1975]

This book describes techniques, data structures, and algorithms for translating
programming languages into executable code. A modern compiler is often
organized into many phases, each operating on a different abstract “language.”
The chapters of this book follow the organization of a compiler, each covering
a successive phase.
To illustrate the issues in compiling real programming languages, I show
how to compile Tiger, a simple but nontrivial language of the Algol family,
with nested scope and heap-allocated records. Programming exercises in each
chapter call for the implementation of the corresponding phase; a student
who implements all the phases described in Part I of the book will have a
working compiler. Tiger is easily modified to be functional or object-oriented
(or both), and exercises in Part II show how to do this. Other chapters in Part
II cover advanced techniques in program optimization. Appendix A describes
the Tiger language.
The interfaces between modules of the compiler are almost as important as
the algorithms inside the modules. To describe the interfaces concretely, it is
useful to write them down in a real programming language. This book uses
Java – a simple object-oriented language. Java is safe, in that programs cannot
circumvent the type system to violate abstractions; and it has garbage collec-
tion, which greatly simplifies the management of dynamic storage allocation.

3
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION

Environ-
ments
Source Program

Abstract Syntax
Tables

Reductions

Translate

IR Trees

IR Trees
Tokens

Assem
Parsing Semantic Canon- Instruction
Lex Parse Actions Analysis Translate icalize Selection

Frame
Frame
Layout

Relocatable Object Code

Register Assignment

Assembly Language
Interference Graph

Machine Language
Flow Graph
Assem

Control Data
Flow Flow Register Code Assembler Linker
Analysis Analysis Allocation Emission

FIGURE 1.1. Phases of a compiler, and interfaces between them.

Both of these properties are useful in writing compilers (and almost any kind
of software).
This is not a textbook on Java programming. Students using this book who
do not know Java already should pick it up as they go along, using a Java
programming book as a reference. Java is a small enough language, with
simple enough concepts, that this should not be difficult for students with
good programming skills in other languages.

1.1 MODULES AND INTERFACES

Any large software system is much easier to understand and implement if

the designer takes care with the fundamental abstractions and interfaces.
Figure 1.1 shows the phases in a typical compiler. Each phase is implemented
as one or more software modules.
Breaking the compiler into this many pieces allows for reuse of the com-
ponents. For example, to change the target-machine for which the compiler

4
 1.2. TOOLS AND SOFTWARE

produces machine language, it suffices to replace just the Frame Layout and In-
struction Selection modules. To change the source language being compiled,
only the modules up through Translate need to be changed. The compiler
can be attached to a language-oriented syntax editor at the Abstract Syntax
interface.
The learning experience of coming to the right abstraction by several itera-
tions of think–implement–redesign is one that should not be missed. However,
the student trying to finish a compiler project in one semester does not have
this luxury. Therefore, I present in this book the outline of a project where the
abstractions and interfaces are carefully thought out, and are as elegant and
general as I am able to make them.
Some of the interfaces, such as Abstract Syntax, IR Trees, and Assem, take
the form of data structures: for example, the Parsing Actions phase builds an
Abstract Syntax data structure and passes it to the Semantic Analysis phase.
Other interfaces are abstract data types; the Translate interface is a set of
functions that the Semantic Analysis phase can call, and the Tokens interface
takes the form of a function that the Parser calls to get the next token of the
input program.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PHASES

Each chapter of Part I of this book describes one compiler phase, as shown in
Table 1.2
This modularization is typical of many real compilers. But some com-
pilers combine Parse, Semantic Analysis, Translate, and Canonicalize into
one phase; others put Instruction Selection much later than I have done, and
combine it with Code Emission. Simple compilers omit the Control Flow
Analysis, Data Flow Analysis, and Register Allocation phases.
I have designed the compiler in this book to be as simple as possible, but
no simpler. In particular, in those places where corners are cut to simplify the
implementation, the structure of the compiler allows for the addition of more
optimization or fancier semantics without violence to the existing interfaces.

1.2 TOOLS AND SOFTWARE

Two of the most useful abstractions used in modern compilers are context-free
grammars, for parsing, and regular expressions, for lexical analysis. To make
best use of these abstractions it is helpful to have special tools, such as Yacc

5
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION

Chapter Phase Description

2 Lex Break the source file into individual words, or tokens.
3 Parse Analyze the phrase structure of the program.
4 Semantic Build a piece of abstract syntax tree corresponding to each phrase.
Actions
5 Semantic Determine what each phrase means, relate uses of variables to
Analysis their definitions, check types of expressions, request translation
of each phrase.
6 Frame Place variables, function-parameters, etc. into activation records
Layout (stack frames) in a machine-dependent way.
7 Translate Produce intermediate representation trees (IR trees), a notation
that is not tied to any particular source language or target-machine
architecture.
8 Canonicalize Hoist side effects out of expressions, and clean up conditional
branches, for the convenience of the next phases.
9 Instruction Group the IR-tree nodes into clumps that correspond to the actions
Selection of target-machine instructions.
10 Control Analyze the sequence of instructions into a control flow graph
Flow that shows all the possible flows of control the program might
Analysis follow when it executes.
10 Dataflow Gather information about the flow of information through vari-
Analysis ables of the program; for example, liveness analysis calculates
the places where each program variable holds a still-needed value
(is live).
11 Register Choose a register to hold each of the variables and temporary
Allocation values used by the program; variables not live at the same time
can share the same register.
12 Code Replace the temporary names in each machine instruction with
Emission machine registers.

TABLE 1.2. Description of compiler phases.

(which converts a grammar into a parsing program) and Lex (which converts
a declarative specification into a lexical analysis program). Fortunately, good
versions of these tools are available for Java, and the project described in this
book makes use of them.
The programming projects in this book can be compiled using Sun’s Java

6
 1.3. DATA STRUCTURES FOR TREE LANGUAGES

Stm → Stm ; Stm (CompoundStm)

ExpList → Exp , ExpList (PairExpList)
Stm → id := Exp (AssignStm)
ExpList → Exp (LastExpList)
Stm → print ( ExpList ) (PrintStm)
Binop →+ (Plus)
Exp → id (IdExp)
Binop →− (Minus)
Exp → num (NumExp)
Binop →× (Times)
Exp → Exp Binop Exp (OpExp)
Binop →/ (Div)
Exp → ( Stm , Exp ) (EseqExp)

GRAMMAR 1.3. A straight-line programming language.

Development Kit, or (in principle) any Java compiler. The lexical-analyzer

generator JavaLex and the parser generator CUP are freely available on the
Internet; for information see the Wide-World Web page

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/˜appel/modern/

Source code for some modules of the Tiger compiler, support code for some
of the programming exercises, example Tiger programs, and other useful files
are also available from the same Web address.
Skeleton source code for the programming assignments is available from
this Web page; the programming exercises in this book refer to this directory as
$TIGER/ when referring to specific subdirectories and files contained therein.

1.3 DATA STRUCTURES FOR TREE LANGUAGES

Many of the important data structures used in a compiler are intermediate

representations of the program being compiled. Often these representations
take the form of trees, with several node types, each of which has different
attributes. Such trees can occur at many of the phase-interfaces shown in
Figure 1.1.
Tree representations can be described with grammars, just like program-
ming languages. To introduce the concepts, I will show a simple programming
language with statements and expressions, but no loops or if-statements (this
is called a language of straight-line programs).
The syntax for this language is given in Grammar 1.3.
The informal semantics of the language is as follows. Each Stm is a state-
ment, each Exp is an expression. s1 ; s2 executes statement s1 , then statement

7
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION

s2 . i:=e evaluates the expression e, then “stores” the result in variable i.

print(e1 , e2 , . . . , en ) displays the values of all the expressions, evaluated
left to right, separated by spaces, terminated by a newline.
An identifier expression, such as i, yields the current contents of the variable
i. A number evaluates to the named integer. An operator expression e1 op e2
evaluates e1 , then e2 , then applies the given binary operator. And an expression
sequence s, e behaves like the C-language “comma” operator, evaluating the
statement s for side effects before evaluating (and returning the result of) the
expression e.
For example, executing this program

a := 5+3; b := (print(a, a-1), 10*a); print(b)

prints

8 7
80

How should this program be represented inside a compiler? One represen-

tation is source code, the characters that the programmer writes. But that is
not so easy to manipulate. More convenient is a tree data structure, with one
node for each statement (Stm) and expression (Exp). Figure 1.4 shows a tree
representation of the program; the nodes are labeled by the production labels
of Grammar 1.3, and each node has as many children as the corresponding
grammar production has right-hand-side symbols.
We can translate the grammar directly into data structure definitions, as
shown in Figure 1.5. Each grammar symbol corresponds to an abstract
class in the data structures:

Grammar class
Stm Stm
Exp Exp
ExpList ExpList
id String
num int

For each grammar rule, there is one constructor that belongs to the class
for its left-hand-side symbol. We simply extend the abstract class with a
“concrete” class for each grammar rule. The constructor (class) names are
indicated on the right-hand side of Grammar 1.3.

8
 1.3. DATA STRUCTURES FOR TREE LANGUAGES

.
CompoundStm

AssignStm CompoundStm

a OpExp
AssignStm PrintStm
NumExp Plus NumExp LastExpList
b EseqExp
5 3 IdExp
PrintStm OpExp b
PairExpList
NumExp Times IdExp

IdExp LastExpList 10 a

a OpExp

IdExp Minus NumExp

a 1

a := 5 + 3 ; b := ( print ( a , a - 1 ) , 10 * a ) ; print ( b )

FIGURE 1.4. Tree representation of a straight-line program.

Each grammar rule has right-hand-side components that must be repre-

sented in the data structures. The CompoundStm has two Stm’s on the right-
hand side; the AssignStm has an identifier and an expression; and so on. These
become fields of the subclasses in the Java data structure. Thus, Compound-
Stm has two fields (also called instance variables) called stm1 and stm2;
AssignStm has fields id and exp.
For Binop we do something simpler. Although we could make a Binop class
– with subclasses for Plus, Minus, Times, Div – this is overkill because none
of the subclasses would need any fields. Instead we make an “enumeration”
type (in Java, actually an integer) of constants (final int variables) local to
the OpExp class.

Programming style. We will follow several conventions for representing tree

data structures in Java:

1. Trees are described by a grammar.

9
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION

public abstract class Stm {}

public class CompoundStm extends Stm {

Stm stm1, stm2;
public CompoundStm(Stm s1, Stm s2) {stm1=s1; stm2=s2;}}

public class AssignStm extends Stm {

String id; Exp exp;
public AssignStm(String i, Exp e) {id=i; exp=e;}}

public class PrintStm extends Stm {

ExpList exps;
public PrintStm(ExpList e) {exps=e;}}

public abstract class Exp {}

public class IdExp extends Exp {

String id;
public IdExp(String i) {id=i;}}

public class NumExp extends Exp {

int num;
public NumExp(int n) {num=n;}}

public class OpExp extends Exp {

Exp left, right; int oper;
final public static int Plus=1,Minus=2,Times=3,Div=4;
public OpExp(Exp l, int o, Exp r) {left=l; oper=o; right=r;}}

public class EseqExp extends Exp {

Stm stm; Exp exp;
public EseqExp(Stm s, Exp e) {stm=s; exp=e;}}

public abstract class ExpList {}

public class PairExpList extends ExpList {

Exp head; ExpList tail;
public PairExpList(Exp h, ExpList t) {head=h; tail=t;}}

public class LastExpList extends ExpList {

Exp head;
public LastExpList(Exp h) {head=h;}}

PROGRAM 1.5. Representation of straight-line programs.

10
 PROGRAMMING EXERCISE

2. A tree is described by one or more abstract classes, each corresponding to a

symbol in the grammar.
3. Each abstract class is extended by one or more subclasses, one for each gram-
mar rule.
4. For each nontrivial symbol in the right-hand side of a rule, there will be one
field in the corresponding class. (A trivial symbol is a punctuation symbol
such as the semicolon in CompoundStm.)
5. Every class will have a constructor function that initializes all the fields.
6. Data structures are initialized when they are created (by the constructor func-
tions), and are never modified after that (until they are eventually discarded).

Modularity principles for Java programs. A compiler can be a big program;

careful attention to modules and interfaces prevents chaos. We will use these
principles in writing a compiler in Java:
1. Each phase or module of the compiler belongs in its own package.
2. “Import on demand” declarations will not be used. If a Java file begins with
import A.F.*; import A.G.*; import B.*; import C.*;
then the human reader will have to look outside this file to tell which package
defines the X that is used in the expression X.put().
3. “Single-type import” declarations are a better solution. If the module begins,
import A.F.W; import A.G.X; import B.Y; import C.Z;
then you can tell without looking outside this file that X comes from A.G.
4. Java is naturally a multithreaded system. We would like to support multiple
simultaneous compiler threads and compile two different programs simultane-
ously, one in each compiler thread. Therefore, static variables must be avoided
unless they are final (constant). We never want two compiler threads to be
updating the same (static) instance of a variable.

PROGRAM STRAIGHT-LINE PROGRAM INTERPRETER

Implement a simple program analyzer and interpreter for the straight-line
programming language. This exercise serves as an introduction to environ-
ments (symbol tables mapping variable-names to information about the vari-
ables); to abstract syntax (data structures representing the phrase structure
of programs); to recursion over tree data structures, useful in many parts
of a compiler; and to a functional style of programming without assignment
statements.
It also serves as a “warm-up” exercise in Java programming. Programmers
experienced in other languages but new to Java should be able to do this
exercise, but will need supplementary material (such as textbooks) on Java.

11
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION

Programs to be interpreted are already parsed into abstract syntax, as de-

scribed by the data types in Program 1.5.
However, we do not wish to worry about parsing the language, so we write
this program by applying data constructors:

Stm prog =
new CompoundStm(new AssignStm("a",
new OpExp(new NumExp(5),
OpExp.Plus, new NumExp(3))),
new CompoundStm(new AssignStm("b",
new EseqExp(new PrintStm(new PairExpList(new IdExp("a"),
new LastExpList(new OpExp(new IdExp("a"),
OpExp.Minus,new NumExp(1))))),

new OpExp(new NumExp(10), OpExp.Times,

new IdExp("a")))),
new PrintStm(new LastExpList(new IdExp("b")))));

Files with the data type declarations for the trees, and this sample program,
are available in the directory $TIGER/chap1.
Writing interpreters without side effects (that is, assignment statements that
update variables and data structures) is a good introduction to denotational
semantics and attribute grammars, which are methods for describing what
programming languages do. It’s often a useful technique in writing compilers,
too; compilers are also in the business of saying what programming languages
do.
Therefore, in implementing these programs, never assign a new value to
any variable or object-field except when it is initialized. For local variables,
use the initializing form of declaration (for example, int i=j+3;) and for
each class, make a constructor function (like the CompoundStm constructor
in Program 1.5).

1. Write a Java function int maxargs(Stm s) that tells the maximum num-
ber of arguments of any print statement within any subexpression of a given
statement. For example, maxargs(prog) is 2.
2. Write a Java function void interp(Stm s) that “interprets” a program
in this language. To write in a “functional programming” style – in which
you never use an assignment statement – initialize each local variable as you
declare it.

Your functions that examine each Exp will have to use instanceof to
determine which subclass the expression belongs to and then cast to the proper

12
PROGRAMMING EXERCISE

subclass. Or you can add methods to the Exp and Stm classes to avoid the use
of instanceof.
For part 1, remember that print statements can contain expressions that
contain other print statements.
For part 2, make two mutually recursive functions interpStm and interp-
Exp. Represent a “table,” mapping identifiers to the integer values assigned
to them, as a list of id × int pairs.

class Table {
String id; int value; Table tail;
Table(String i, int v, Table t) {id=i; value=v; tail=t;}
}

Then interpStm is declared as

Table_ interpStm(Stm s, Table_ t)

taking a table t1 as argument and producing the new table t2 that’s just like
t1 except that some identifiers map to different integers as a result of the
statement.
For example, the table t1 that maps a to 3 and maps c to 4, which we write
{a 7→ 3, c 7→ 4} in mathematical notation, could be represented as the linked
list a 3 c 4 .
Now, let the table t2 be just like t1 , except that it maps c to 7 instead of 4.
Mathematically, we could write,

t2 = update(t1 , c, 7)

where the update function returns a new table {a 7→ 3, c 7→ 7}.

On the computer, we could implement t2 by putting a new cell at the head of
the linked list: c 7 a 3 c 4 as long as we assume that
the first occurrence of c in the list takes precedence over any later occurrence.
Therefore, the update function is easy to implement; and the correspond-
ing lookup function

int lookup(Table t, String key)

just searches down the linked list. Of course, in an object-oriented style,

lookup should be a method of the Table class.
Interpreting expressions is more complicated than interpreting statements,
because expressions return integer values and have side effects. We wish
to simulate the straight-line programming language’s assignment statements

13
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION

without doing any side effects in the interpreter itself. (The print statements
will be accomplished by interpreter side effects, however.) The solution is to
declare interpExp as

class IntAndTable {int i; Table t;

IntAndTable(int ii, Table tt) {i=ii; t=tt;}
}
IntAndTable interpExp(Exp e, Table t) · · ·

The result of interpreting an expression e1 with table t1 is an integer value i

and a new table t2 . When interpreting an expression with two subexpressions
(such as an OpExp), the table t2 resulting from the first subexpression can be
used in processing the second subexpression.

EXERCISES

1.1 This simple program implements persistent functional binary search trees, so
that if tree2=insert(x,tree1), then tree1 is still available for lookups
even while tree2 can be used.

class Tree {Tree left; String key; right;

Tree(Tree l, String k, Tree r) {left=l; key=k; right=r;}
}

Tree insert(String key, Tree t) {

if (t==null) return new Tree(null, key, null)
else if (key < t.key)
return new Tree(insert(key,t.left),t.key,t.right);
else if (key > t.key)
return new Tree(t.left,t.key,insert(key,t.right));
else return new Tree(t.left,key,t.right);
}

a. Implement a member function that returns true if the item is found, else
false.
b. Extend the program to include not just membership, but the mapping of
keys to bindings:
Tree insert(String key, Object binding, Tree t);
Object lookup(String key, Tree t);
c. These trees are not balanced; demonstrate the behavior on the following
two sequences of insertions:
(a) t s p i p f b s t

14
 EXERCISES

(b) a b c d e f g h i
*d. Research balanced search trees in Sedgewick [1988] and recommend
a balanced-tree data structure for functional symbol tables. (Hint: to
preserve a functional style, the algorithm should be one that rebalances
on insertion but not on lookup.)
e. Rewrite in an object-oriented style (but still “functional”) style, so that
insertion is now t.insert(key) instead of insert(key,t). Hint: you’ll
need an EmptyTree subclass.

15