COMPILER DESIGN

Topic: Lexical Analysis

Soma Ghosh - [email protected]

 The role of lexical analyzer

token
Source Lexical To semantic
Parser
program Analyzer analysis
getNextToken

Symbol
table
Why to separate Lexical
analysis and parsing
1. Simplicity of design
2. Improving compiler efficiency
3. Enhancing compiler portability
Tokens, Patterns and Lexemes

• A token is a pair a token name and an optional token

value
• A pattern is a description of the form that the lexemes
of a token may take
• A lexeme is a sequence of characters in the source
program that matches the pattern for a token
Example

Token Informal description Sample lexemes

if Characters i, f if
else Characters e, l, s, e else
comparison < or > or <= or >= or == or != <=, !=

id Letter followed by letter and digits pi, score, D2

number Any numeric constant 3.14159, 0, 6.02e23
literal Anything but “ sorrounded by “ “core dumped”

printf(“total = %d\n”, score);

Attributes for tokens

• E = M * C ** 2
• <id, pointer to symbol table entry for E>
• <assign-op>
• <id, pointer to symbol table entry for M>
• <mult-op>
• <id, pointer to symbol table entry for C>
• <exp-op>
• <number, integer value 2>
Lexical errors

• Some errors are out of power of lexical analyzer to

recognize:
• fi (a == f(x)) …
• However it may be able to recognize errors like:
• d = 2r
• Such errors are recognized when no pattern for tokens
matches a character sequence
Error recovery

• Panic mode: successive characters are ignored until we

reach to a well formed token
• Delete one character from the remaining input
• Insert a missing character into the remaining input
• Replace a character by another character
• Transpose two adjacent characters
Input buffering

• Sometimes lexical analyzer needs to look ahead some

symbols to decide about the token to return
• In C language: we need to look after -, = or < to decide what
token to return
• In Fortran: DO 5 I = 1.25
• We need to introduce a two buffer scheme to handle
large look-aheads safely

E = M * C * * 2 eof
 Sentinels

E = M eof * C * * 2 eof eof

Switch (*forward++) {
case eof:
if (forward is at end of first buffer) {
reload second buffer;
forward = beginning of second buffer;
}
else if {forward is at end of second buffer) {
reload first buffer;\
forward = beginning of first buffer;
}
else /* eof within a buffer marks the end of input */
terminate lexical analysis;
break;
cases for the other characters;
}
Specification of tokens

• In theory of compilation regular expressions are used to

formalize the specification of tokens
• Regular expressions are means for specifying regular
languages
• Example:
• Letter_(letter_ | digit)*
• Each regular expression is a pattern specifying the form
of strings
Regular expressions

• Ɛ is a regular expression, L(Ɛ) = {Ɛ}

• If a is a symbol in ∑then a is a regular expression, L(a)
= {a}
• (r) | (s) is a regular expression denoting the language
L(r) ∪ L(s)
• (r)(s) is a regular expression denoting the language
L(r)L(s)
• (r)* is a regular expression denoting (L9r))*
• (r) is a regular expression denting L(r)
Regular definitions

d1 -> r1
d2 -> r2
…
dn -> rn

• Example:
letter_ -> A | B | … | Z | a | b | … | Z | _
digit -> 0 | 1 | … | 9
id -> letter_ (letter_ | digit)*
Extensions

• One or more instances: (r)+

• Zero of one instances: r?
• Character classes: [abc]

• Example:
• letter_ -> [A-Za-z_]
• digit -> [0-9]
• id -> letter_(letter|digit)*
Recognition of tokens

• Starting point is the language grammar to understand

the tokens:
stmt -> if expr then stmt
| if expr then stmt else stmt
|Ɛ
expr -> term relop term
| term
term -> id
| number
Recognition of tokens (cont.)

• The next step is to formalize the patterns:

digit -> [0-9]
Digits -> digit+
number -> digit(.digits)? (E[+-]? Digit)?
letter -> [A-Za-z_]
id -> letter (letter|digit)*
If -> if
Then -> then
Else -> else
Relop -> < | > | <= | >= | = | <>
• We also need to handle whitespaces:
ws -> (blank | tab | newline)+
Transition diagrams

• Transition diagram for relop

Transition diagrams (cont.)

• Transition diagram for reserved words and identifiers

Transition diagrams (cont.)

• Transition diagram for unsigned numbers

Transition diagrams (cont.)

• Transition diagram for whitespace

Architecture of a transition-diagram-
based lexical analyzer
TOKEN getRelop()
{
TOKEN retToken = new (RELOP)
while (1) { /* repeat character processing until a
return or failure occurs */
switch(state) {
case 0: c= nextchar();
if (c == ‘<‘) state = 1;
else if (c == ‘=‘) state = 5;
else if (c == ‘>’) state = 6;
else fail(); /* lexeme is not a relop */
break;
case 1: …
…
case 8: retract();
retToken.attribute = GT;
return(retToken);
}
Lexical Analyzer Generator - Lex

Lex Source Lexical

lex.yy.c
program Compiler
lex.l

lex.yy.c
C a.out
compiler

Input stream a.out

Sequence
of tokens
Structure of Lex programs

declarations
%%
translation rules Pattern {Action}
%%
auxiliary functions
Compiling & executing lex programs