CSE 401 Midterm Exam 11/4/11

Name ________________________________

There are 7 questions worth a total of 100 points. Please budget your time so you get to
all of the questions. Keep your answers brief and to the point.

The exam is closed books, closed notes, closed electronics; please turn off all cell phones,
personal electronics, alarm watches, and pagers; no telepathy or smoke signals, etc.,
except that you may have one sheet of paper with handwritten notes on it.

A copy of the MiniJava grammar is included on the next page in case you find it useful.
Feel free to remove it from the exam if you wish.

Please wait to turn the page until everyone is told to begin.

Score _________________

1 _______ / 12

2 _______ / 12

3 _______ / 8

4 _______ / 14

5 _______ / 26

6 _______ / 14

7 _______ / 14

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 CSE 401 Midterm Exam 11/4/11

Question 1. (12 points, 2 each) The front end of a compiler consists of three parts:
scanner, parser, and (static) semantics. Collectively these need to analyze the input
program and decide if it is correctly formed. For each of the following properties or
errors, indicate which stage of the front-end of the compiler would normally handle it. If
it helps to explain your answer you can give a brief reason why, but that is not required.

(a) In a variable declaration, the variable has not previously been declared in the same
scope.

(b) += is not a legal assignment operator in MiniJava.

(c) A comment beginning with /* is not terminated before reaching the end of the input
file (i.e., no matching */ found).

(e) In the method call x.m(e1,e2,…,en), the type of x includes a suitable method m.

(e) Class declarations cannot be nested in MiniJava.

(f) The € character cannot be used in an identifier in MiniJava.

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 CSE 401 Midterm Exam 11/4/11

Question 2. Regular expressions (12 points, 6 each) Give regular expressions for the
following sets of strings. You may only use the basic operations of concatenation, choice
(|), and repetition (*), plus the simple extensions ? and +, and character sets like [a-z] and
[^a-z]. You may also give names to subexpressions like vowels = [aeiou].

(a) All strings of 0’s and 1’s that have at least one character and start and end with the
same character. (Note that the strings 0 and 1 by themselves are in this set, as well as
longer strings of 0’s and 1’s that have the same character at the beginning and end.)

(b) All strings of a’s, b’s and c’s that (i) have at least one c, and (ii) all of the a’s (if any)
are to the left of all of the b’s (if any).

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 CSE 401 Midterm Exam 11/4/11

Question 3. DFAs. (8 points) Draw a DFA that accepts strings generated by the regular
expression (a | (bc)* d)+

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 CSE 401 Midterm Exam 11/4/11

Question 4. Context-free grammars (14 points) Consider the following syntax for
expressions involving addition and field selection:

expr ::= expr + field

expr ::= field
field ::= expr . id
field ::= id

(a) (8 points) Show that this grammar is ambiguous.

(b) (6 points) Give an unambiguous context-free grammar that fixes the problem(s) with
the grammar in part (a) and generates expressions with id, field selection and addition.
As in Java, field selection should have higher precedence than addition and both field
selection and addition should be left-associative (i.e., a+b+c means (a+b)+c).

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 CSE 401 Midterm Exam 11/4/11

Question 5. (26 points) The oh-no-not-again LR-parsing question. Here is a tiny

grammar.

0. exp′ ::= exp $

1. exp ::= id [exp ]
2. exp ::= id

(a) (11 points) Draw the LR(0) state machine for this grammar.

(continued on next page)

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 CSE 401 Midterm Exam 11/4/11

Question 5. (cont.) Grammar repeated from previous page for reference.

0. exp′ ::= exp $

1. exp ::= id [exp ]
2. exp ::= id

(b) (9 points) Construct the LR(0) parse table for this grammar based on the state
machine in your answer to part (a).

(b) (3 points) Is this grammar LR(0)? Why or why not?

(c) (3 points) Is this grammar SLR? Why or why not?

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 CSE 401 Midterm Exam 11/4/11

Question 6. Project (14 points) Suppose we want to add a do-while loop to MiniJava
like the one found in Java, C, C++, and other languages. The syntax of do-while is

do Statement while ( Expression )

The semantics of do-while is that the Statement is executed, then the Expression is
evaluated, then, if the Expression is true, the process repeats again until the Expression
eventually evaluates to false.

(a) (3 points) What changes need to be made to the MiniJava scanner if this statement is
added? You do not need to give specific JFlex or CUP code, just describe the needed
changes, if any.

(b) (3 points) What changes or additions (if any) need to be made to the MiniJava AST
classes to add the do-while statement? Again, you don’t need to give specific code, but
describe your changes specifically enough that anyone familiar with the project could
make the changes mechanically.

(c) (8 points) Give the code that needs to be added to the grammar part of the CUP
specification for Statement to successfully parse the new do-while statement, including
appropriate semantic action code to create appropriate part(s) of the AST.

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 CSE 401 Midterm Exam 11/4/11

Question 7. (14 points, 7 each) Suppose we encounter the following statement in a

MiniJava program:

foo = x.m(a[i]);

(a) Draw a tree below showing the abstract syntax for this statement. Don’t worry about
whether you match the AST classes in the MiniJava project exactly (you’re not expected
to memorize that sort of thing), but be sure that you have the appropriate nodes and edges
to include the information that belongs in the abstract syntax.

(b) After you’ve drawn the AST for this statement, annotate it by writing next to the
appropriate nodes the checks or tests that need to be done in the static semantics/type-
checking phase of the compiler to ensure that this statement does not contain any errors.

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