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COMPILER DESIGN :: 2 Marks Question and Answers

UNIT I
INTRODUCTION TO COMPILING

1. Define compiler?
A compiler is a program that reads a program written in one language (source language) and
translates it into an equivalent program in another language (target language) and the compiler reports to its
user the presence of errors in the source program.

2. What are the classifications of compiler?

● Single pass compiler
● Multi pass compiler
● Load-and-go compiler
● Debugging or optimizing compiler

3. What are the phases of compiler?

● Lexical analyzer
● Syntax analyzer
● Semantic analyzer
● Intermediate code generation
● Code generation
● Code optimization
● Symbol table manager.

4. Define preprocessor & what are the functions of preprocessor?

Preprocessor produce input to the compilers (i.e.) the program will be divided in to the modules.
They may perform the following functions.
● Macro processing
● File inclusion
● Rational preprocessor
● Language extension

5. What are the tools available in analysis phase?

● Structure editors
● Pretty printer
● Static checkers
● Interpreters.

6. Define pretty printers?

A pretty printer analyzes a program and prints it in such a way that the structure of the program
becomes clearly visible. For the comments may appear with an amount of indentation proportional to the
depth of their nesting in the hierarchical organization of the statement.

7. Define assembler and its types?

It is defined by the low level language is assembly language and high level language is machine
language is called assembler.
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● One pass assembler
● Two pass assembler

8. Give the types of a language processing system?

● Preprocessors
● Compilers
● Assembler
● Loaders and link editors

9. What are the functions performed in analysis phase?

● Lexical analysis or Linear analysis
● Syntax analysis or hierarchical analysis
● Semantic analysis

10. What are the functions performed in synthesis phase?

● Intermediate code generation
● Code generation
● Code optimization

11. Give the classification of processing performed by the semantic analysis?

● Processing of declarative statements.
● Processing of executable statements.

12. Give the properties of intermediate representation?

● It should be easy to produce.
● It should be easy to translate into the target program.

13. What are the two different parts of compilation?

● Analysis phases of compilation
● Synthesis phases of compilation

14. What is meant by lexical analysis?

It reads the characters in the program and groups them into tokens that are sequences of characters having a
collective meaning Such as an identifier, a keyword, a punctuation, character or a multi-character operator like
++.

15. What is meant by syntax analysis?

It processes the string of descriptors, synthesized by the lexical analyzer, to determine the syntactic
structure of an input statement. This process is known as parsing. Output of the parsing step is a representation
of the syntactic structure of a statement. It is represented in the form of syntax tree.

16. What is meant by intermediate code generation?

After syntax and semantic analysis, some compilers generate an explicit intermediate representation of the
source program. It can have a variety of forms. This form called three- address code. It consists of sequence of
instructions, each of which has at most three operands.
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17. What is meant by semantic analysis?
This phase checks the source program for semantic errors and gathers type of information for the
subsequent phase.

18. What do you meant by interpreter?

Certain other translators transform a programming language into a simplified language called intermediate
code, which can directly executed using a program called an interpreter.

19. What do you meant by phases?

Each of which transforms the source program one representation to another. A phase is a logically cohesive
operation that takes as input one representation of the source program and produces as output another
representation

20. Write short notes on symbol table manager?

The table management or bookkeeping portion of the compiler keeps track of the names used by program
and records essential information about each, such as its type (int, real etc.,) the data structure used to record
this information is called a symbol table manger.

21. Write short ns on error handler

The error handler is invoked when a flaw in the source program is detected. It must warn the programmer
by issuing a diagnostic, and adjust the information being passed from phase to phase so that each phase can
proceed. So that as many errors as possible can be detected in one compilation

1. Mention some of the cousins of the compiler?

● Preprocessors
● Assemblers
● Two pass assembly
● Loaders and Linker-editors.

23. What is front end and back end?

The phases are collected into a front end and a back end. The front end consists of those phases or parts of
phases, that depends primarily on the source language and is largely independent of the target machine. The
back ends that depend on the target machine and generally these portions do not depend on the source
language.

24. What do you meant by passes?

A pass reads the source program or the output of he previous pass, makes the transformations specified by
its phases and writes output into an intermediate file, which may then be read by a subsequent pass. In an
implementation of a compiler, portions of one or more phases are combined into a module called pass.

25. List some compiler construction tools?

● Parser generators
● Scanner generators
● Syntax-directed translation engine
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● Automatic code generators
● Data-flow engine

26. Explain any one compiler construction tool?

Scanner generators, these automatically generate lexical analyzers normally from a specification based on
regular expressions. The resulting of lexical analyzer is in effect of finite automata.

UNIT II – LEXICAL ANALYSIS

1. What are issues available in lexical analysis?

● Simpler design
● Compiler efficiency is improved by specialized buffering techniques for reading input characters
and processing tokens and significantly speeds up the performance of a compiler.
● Compiler portability is enhanced.
2 Define patterns/lexeme/tokens?
A set of strings in the input for which the same token is produced as output. This set of strings
described by a rule called pattern associated with the token.
A lexeme is a sequence of characters in the source program that is matched by the pattern for a
token.
Token is a sequence of character that can be treated as a single logical entity.

3. Give the algebraic properties of regular expression?

AXIOM DESCRIPTION
r/s = s/r / is commutative
r/(s/t)=(r/s)/t / is associative
(rs)t=r(st) concatenation is associative
r(s/t)=rs/rt concatenation distributes over /
r**=r* * is idempotent

4. What are the systems referred to data flow engine?

● Compiler-compilers
● Compiler-generators
● Translator writing systems.

5. Give the parts of a string?

Prefix of s, suffix of s, substring of s, proper prefix, proper suffix, proper substring and
subsequence of s.

6. What are the operations on language?

▪ Union
▪ Concatenation
▪ Kleene closure or star closure and
▪ Star closure.
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7. Give the error recovery actions in lexical errors?

● Deleting an extraneous character
● Inserting a missing character
● Replacing an incorrect character by a correct character.

8. What are the implementations of lexical analyzer?

● Use a lexical analyzer generator, such as Lex compiler, to produce the lexical analyzer from a
regular expression based specification

● Write the lexical analyzer in a conventional systems-programming language using the I/O facilities
of that language to read the input.
● Write the lexical analyzer in assembly language and explicitly manage the reading of input.
9. Define regular expression?
● It is built up out of simpler regular expression using a set of defining rules. Each regular expression
„r□ denotes a language L(r). The defining rules specify how L(r)
is formed by combining in various ways the languages denoted by the sub expressions of r.

10. Give the precedence of regular expression operator?

● The unary operator * has the highest precedence and is left associative.
● Concatenation has the seco d highest precedence and is left associative.

11. Define the length of a string?

It is the number of occurrences of symbols in string,„s□ denoted by |s|.
Example: s=abc, |s| =3.

12. Give the rules in regular expression?

● € is a regular expression that denotes {€}, that is the set containing the empty string.
●
If „a is a symbol in , then a is a regular expression that denoted {a} , i.e., the set containing the string a.
● Suppose r and s are regular expression denoting the languages L( r) and L(s) .

13. Define regular set?

A language denoted by a regular expression is said to be a regular set.

14. Give the types of notational shorthand’s of RE?

o Zero or more instance
o One or more instance character classes.
o Character not in a given set and unary operator.
15. Define kleene closure or star closure and positive closure?
Star closure of L, denoted L*, is the set of those strings that can be forced by taking any number of strings
from L and concatenating all of them. L* = Li
Positive closure of L ,denoted L+, is the set of those strings that can be

Formed by one or more concatenations of L L+ =Li

16. Define character class with example.
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The notation [abc] where a, b, c are alphabet symbols denotes the regular expression a/b/c.
Example:
[A-z] = a | b | c | |z
Regular expression for identifiers using character classes [a – z A – Z] [A – Z a – z 0 – 9]

17. Give the error recovery strategies in lexical analyzer.

● Deleting an extraneous character
● Inserting a missing character
● Replacing an incorrect character by a correct character
● Transposing of two adjacent character

18. Write the R.E. for the following language.

Set of statements over {a,b,c} that contain no two consecutive b□s
(B/c) (A/c/ab/cb)*
Set of statements over {a,b,c} that contain an even no of a□s ((b/c)* a
(b/c) * a)* (b/c)*

19.Describe the language denoted by the following R.E.

(0/1)*0(0/1)(0/1)
The set of all strings of 0’s and 1’s with the third symbol from the right end is 0.
0(0/1)*0
. The set of all strings of 0’s and 1’s starting and ending with 0
(00/11)*((01/10)(00/11)*(01/10)(00/11)*)
The set of all strings of 0’s and 1’s with even number of 0’s and 1’s

20. What are the tasks in lexical analyzer?

● One task is stripping out from the source program comments and white space in the form
of blank, tab, new line characters.
● Another task is correlating error messages from the compiler with the source
program.

21.Define finite automata and its types with example.

A recognizer for a language is a program that takes as input a string x and answers
“yes” if x is a sentence of the language and “no” otherwise.
A better way to convert a regular expression to a recognizer is to construct a generalized
transition diagram from the expression. This diagram is called a finite automation.
● Deterministic (DFA)
● Non-deterministic (NFA)

22.What are the three parts of lexical program?

Declarations
%%
Translation rules
%%
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Auxiliary procedures

23. What are the four functions of regular expression to DFA?

● Nullable(n)
● Firstpos (n)
● Last (n)
● Follo pos (n)

24.What are the models of LEX compiler?

● Lexeme
● FA simulator
● Transition table

UNIT III – SYNTAX ANALYSIS

1. What do u meant by parser and its types?

A parser for grammar G is a program that takes as input a string „w□ and produces as output either a parse tree
for □w□, if „w□ is a sentence of G, or an error message indicating that w is not a sentence of G. it obtains a
string of tokens from the lexical analyzer, verifies that the string generated by the grammar for the source
language.
a) Top down parsing b) Bottom up parsing

2. What are the different levels of syntax error handler?

a) Lexical, such as misspelling an identifier, keyword, or operator.
b) Syntactic, such as an arithmetic expression with unbalanced parentheses
c) Semantic, such as operator applied to an incompatible operand
d) Logical, such as an infinitely recursive call.

3. What are the goals of error handler in a parser?

● It should report the presence of errors clearly and accurately
● It should recover from each error quickly enough to be able to detect subsequent errors
● It should not significantly slow down the processing of correct programs.

4. What are error recovery strategies in parser?

a) Panic mode
b) Phrase level
c) Error productions
d) Global corrections

5. Define CFG?
Many programming language has rules that prescribe the synta tic structure of well-formed programs. The
syntax of programming language constru ts can be described by CFG. Conditional statement defined by a
rule uch as; If S1 and S2 are statements and E is an expression, then
“If E then S1 else S2” is a statement.
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6. Define ambiguity?
A grammar that produces more than one parse tree for some sentences is said to be ambiguous.

7. Define sentential form?

If G = (V, T, P, S) is a CFG, then any string „α□ in (VUT)* such that S□* α is a sentential
form.

8. Define yield of the string?

A string that is derived from the root variable is called the yield of the tree.

9. Give the several reasons for writing a grammar?

● The lexical rules of a language are frequently quite simple and to describe them we do not need a
notation as powerful as grammars.
● R.E generally provides a more concise and easier to understand notation for token than grammars.

● More efficient lexical analyzers can be constructed automatically from R.E than from arbitrary grammars.
● Separating the syntactic structure of a language into lexical and non lexical parts provides a convenient
way of modularizing the front end of a compiler into two manageable-sized component
10. Define left factoring?
The process of factoring out of common prefixes of alternates is called as left factoring.

11. What are the difficulties with top down parsing?

a) Left recursion
b) Backtracking
c) The order in which alternates are tried can affect the language accepted
d) When failure is reported. We have very little idea where the error actually occurred.

12. What is meant by recursive-descent parser?

A parser that uses a set of recursive procedures to recognize its input with no backtracking is called a
recursive-descent parser. To avoid the necessity of a recursive language, we shall also consider a tabular
implementation of recursive descent called predictive parsing.

13. Define top down parsing?

It can be viewed as an attempt to find the left most derivation for an input string. It can be viewed as
attempting to construct a parse tree for the input starting from the root and creating the nodes of the parse tree
in preorder.

14. Define LL (1) grammar?

A grammar G is LL (1) if and only if, whenever A α / β are two distinct productions of G of the
following conditions
● For no terminal „a do both α and β derive strings beginning with α.
● At most one of α and β can derive the empty string.
● If β*□ e then α does not derive any string beginning with a terminal in
● FOLLOW (A).
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15. What are the possibilities of non-recursive predictive parsing?

● If X = a = $ the parser halts and announces successful completion of parsing
● If X = a = $ the parser pops X off the stack and advances the input pointer to the next symbol
● If X is a non terminal, the program consults entry M[X,a] of the parsing table M. this entry will be
either an X-production of the grammar or an error entry.

16. What are the actions available in shift reduce parser?

● Shift
● Reduce
● Accept
● Error

17 .Define handle?
A handle of a string is a substring that matches the right side of a production, and whose reduction to the non-
terminal on the left side of the production represents one step along the reverse of a right most derivation.

18. Define viable prefixes?

The set of prefixes of right sentential forms that can appear on the stack of a shift reduce parser are called
viable prefixes.

19. What are the two common ways of determining precedence relations should hold between a pair of
terminals?
● Based on associative and precedence of operators.
● Construct an unambiguous grammar for the language, a grammar that reflects the correct associativity and
precedence in its parse tree.

20. Define operator grammar?

A grammar with the property that production right side is £ or has two adjacent non-terminals are called an
operator grammar.

21. Define LR parser?

LR parsers can be used to parse a large class of context free grammars. The technique is called LR (K)
parsing.
o “L” denotes th t input sequence is processed from left to right “R” denotes that
the right most derivation is performed
o “K” denotes that at most K symbols of the sequence are used to make a decision.

22. What are the drawbacks of LR parser?

● Parsing tables are too complicated to be generated by hand, need an automated parser generator.
● Cannot handle ambiguous grammar without special tricks.

23. Give the reasons for LR parser?

● LR parsers can handle a large class of CF languages
● An LR parser can detect syntax errors as soon as they occur
● The LR parsing method is the most general non-back tracking shift reduce parsing method
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● LR parsers can handle all language recognizable by LL(1).

24. What are the techniques for producing LR parsing Table?

● Shift s, where s is a state
● Reduce by a grammar production A□ β
● Accept and Error

25. Define augmented grammar?

If G is a grammar with start symbol S, then G□ the augmented grammar for G, is G with a new
start symbol S□ and production S□ S. the purpose of this new starting production is to indicate to
the parser when it should stop parsing and announce acceptance of the input.

26. Define LR (0) items?

LR (0) item for a grammar G is a production of G with a dot at some position of the right side.
Thus production A XYZ yields he four items.
A->.XYZ, A X.YZ, A XY.Z, A XYZ.

27. What are the two functions of LR parsing algorithm?

● Action function
● GOTO function

28. What are the three types of YACC?

● Declarations
● Translation rules
● Supporting c-routines

29.Give note about semantic actions?

It is a sequence of c statements. In a semantic action, the symbol $$ refers to the attribute value associated with
the NT on the left, and $i refers to the value associated with the i th grammar symbol on the right. It is called
semantic action.

30.Define SLR parser?

The parsing table consisting of the parsing action and goto function determined by constructing an SLR
parsing table algorithm is called SLR(1) table. An LR parser using the SLR (1) table is called SLR (1) parser.
A grammar having an SLR (1) parsing table is called SLR (1) grammar.

31. Give the two optional sections in the declarations parts?

● Ordinary „
● c declarations
Delimited by % {and %}, a temporary variable used by the translation rules or procedures. Declarations of
grammar tokens.

32. What are two classes of items in LR parser?

● Kernel items, which include the initial item, S□□.S, and all items whose dots are not at the left end.
● Non-Kernel items, which have their dots at the left end.
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33. What are the three techniques for constructing LR parsing tables?
● SLR (simple LR)
● Canonical LR
● LALR (Look ahead LR)

34. Define bottom up parsing?

It attempts to construct a parse tree for an input string is beginning at leaves and working up towards the
root (i.e.) reducing a string „w□ to the start symbol of a grammar. At each reduction step, a particular substring
matching the right side of a production is replaced by the symbol on the left of that production. It is a rightmost
derivation and it's also known as shifts reduce parsing.

35.Define LALR grammar?

Last parser construction method, the LALR technique. This method is often used in practice because the
tables obtained by it are considerably smaller than the canonical LR tables, yet most common syntactic
constructs of programming language can be expressed conveniently by an LALR grammar. If there are no
parsing action conflicts, then the given grammar is said to be an LALR (1) grammar. The collection of sets of
items constructed is called LALR (1) collections.

36 .Define operator precedence grammar?

It is an £-free operator grammar in which the precedence relations <., =., and .> constructed as above are
disjoint. That is for any pair of terminals a and b, never more than one of the relations a<.b, a=.b, and a.>b is
true.

37. Define handle pruning?

Reducing β to A in αβw is called handle pruning, i.e., removing the children of A from the parse tree.

38. Eliminate left recursion from the grammar. S□ Aa / b, A□Ac / Sd/e?

Replaced as A□bdA□ / A□
A□□cA□/ adA□/ £
Finally we obtain
S□Aa / b, A□bdA□ / A□,
A□□cA□ / adA□ / £

39. Define left recursion. Give an example?

A grammar is left recursive if it has a non terminal „A such that there is a derivation A Aα for some strings
α.
Example: Pair of productions A Aα/β. Replaced by non-terminal productions A βA i
and
A αA /β
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UNIT IV– INTERMEDIATE CODE GENERATION

.
1. What are the advantages of generating an intermediate representation?
o Ease of conversion from the source program to the intermediate code.
o Ease with which subsequent processing can be performed from the intermediate code

2. Define a syntax-directed translation?

Syntax-directed translation specifies the translation of a construct in terms of Attributes associated with its
syntactic components. Syntax-directed translation uses context free grammar to specify the syntactic
structure of the input. It is an input- output mapping.

3. Define an attribute. Give the types of an attribute?

An attribute may represent any quantity, with each grammar symbol, it associates a set of attributes and
with each production, a set of semantic rules for computing values of the attributes associated with the
symbols appearing in that production.
Example: a type, a value, a memory location etc.,
Synthesized attributes.
Inherited attributes.

4. Define annotated parse tree?

A parse tree showing the values of attributes at each node is called an annotated parse tree.
The process of computing an attribute values at the nodes is called annotating parse tree.
Example: an annotated parse tree for the input 3*5+4n.

5. Define dependency graph?

The interdependencies among the inherited and synthesized attributes at the nodes in a parse
tree can be depicted by a directed graph is called a dependency graph.
Example: Production
E E1 + E2
Semantic Rule
E.val:= E1.val + E2.val

6. What are the functio s used to create the nodes of syntax trees?
● Mknode (op, left, right)
● Mkleaf (id,entry)
● Mkleaf (num, val)

7. What are the functions for constructing syntax trees for expressions?
● The construction of a syntax tree for an expression is similar to the translation of the expression
into postfix form.
● Each node in a syntax tree can be implemented as a record with several fields.
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8. Define DAG. Give an example?
● DAG is a directed acyclic graph for an expression identifies the common sub expression
in the expression.
Example: DAG for the expression a- 4 *c

P1 = mkleaf(id,a) P2 = mknum(num,4)
P3 = mkleaf(id,c) P4 = mknode(„*-->,p2,p3)
P5 = mknode(„-„,p1,p4)

9.What are the three kinds of intermediate representations?

▪ Syntax trees.
▪ Postfix notation.
▪ Three address code.

10.Define postfix notation?

Postfix notation is a liberalized representation of a syntax tree. It is a list of the nodes of the tree in which a
node appears immediately after its children.
The syntax tree is, a: = b*-c
The postfix notation for the syntax tree is, abc-*c

11.Define three-address code?

Three address code is a sequence of statements of the form x: = y op z. where x, y, z are names, constants,
or compiler generated emporaries, op stand for any type of operator. Since a statement involves not more
than three references it is called a three-address statement, and hence a sequence of such statement is called
three address codes.

12.What are the types of three address statements?

Assignment statements, assignment instruction, copy statements, conditional jump, address- address
statements, indexed assignment statements, address and pointer statements.

13. What are the three types of implementations of three-address statements?

● Quadruples
● Triples
● Indirect Triples.

14. What are the methods of translating Boolean expressions?

There are two principal methods of representing the value of a Boolean expression.
▪ Encode true and false numerically and to evaluate a Boolean expression analogous to an arithmetic
expression.
▪ Flow-of –control. Represent the value of a Boolean expression by a position reached in a program.

15. What are the two purposes of Boolean expressions?

They are used to compute logical expressions.
Often they are used as condition expressions in statements that alter the flow of control, such as if-
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then, if-then-else, or while-do statements.

16. Define quadruple. Give an example?

A quadruple is a record structure with four fields: op, arg1, arg2 and result. The op field contains an
internal code for the operator.
Example: x: =y op z

17. Give the advantages of quadruples?

Can perform peephole optimization.
The contents of field □s arg1, arg2 and result are normally pointers
The symbol-table entries for the names represented by these fields.
If So, temporary names must be entered into the symbol table as they are created.

18. Define triple. Give an example?

Triple is a record structure with three fields: op, arg1 and arg2. The fields arg1 and arg2 are either pointes
to the symbol-table or pointers into the triple structure. This method is used to avoid temporary names into
the symbol table.

19. Define indirect triples. Give the advantage?

Listing pointers to triples rather than listing the triples themselves are called indirect
triples.
Advantages: it can save some space compared with quadruples, if the same temporary
value is used more than once.

20. Define translation scheme?

A translation scheme is CFG in which program fragments called semantic action are embedded within the
right sides of productions. A translation scheme is like a syntax-directed definition, except that the order of
evaluation of the semantic rules is explicitly shown.

21. What are the three address code for a or b and not c?
The three address sequence is
T1:= not c
T2:= b and T1 T3:= a or T2.

22. Write a three address code for the expression a < b or c < d?
100: if a<b goto 103
10 t1:=0
1:
10 goto 104
2:
10 t1:=1
3:
10 if c<d goto
4: 107
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10 2:=0
5:
10 goto 108
6:
10 t2:=1
7:
10 t3:=t1 or t2
8:

23. What are the parameter transmission mechanisms?

● Call by value
● Call by value-result
● Call by reference
● Call by name

24. What are the various data structures used for implementing the symbol table?
● Linear list
● Binary tree
● Hash table

25. What is the purpose of DAG?

A label for each ode. For leaves the label is an identifier and for interior nodes, an operator symbol. For
each node a list of attached identifiers.

26. Define back patching?

It constructs the syntax tree for the input, and then walks the tree in depth-first order. Back patching
can be used to generate code for Boolean expressions and flow-of-control statements in a single pass is that
during one single pass we may not know the labels that control must go to at the time the jump statements
are generated.

27. What are the three functions of back patching?

● Makelist(i) – create a new list.
● Merge(p1,p2) – concatenates the lists pointed to by p1 and p2.
● Backpatch(p,i) – insert i as the target label for the statements pointed to by p.

28. Give a short note about call-by-name?

Call by name, at every reference to a formal parameter in a procedure body the name of the corresponding
actual parameter is evaluated. Access is then made to the effective parameter.

29. How parameters are passed to procedures in call-by-value method?

This mechanism transmits values of the parameters of call to the called program. The transfer is one way only
and therefore the only way to return can be the value of a function.
Main ( )
{ print (5); }
Int Void print (int n)
{ printf (“%d”, n); }
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30. Define symbol table?

A compiler uses a symbol-table to keep track of scope and binding information about names. It is searched
every time a name is encountered in the source text changes to the table occur, if a new name or new
information about an existing name is discovered.

31. What semantic rules are defined in the declarations operations?

● Mktable(previous)
● Enter(table, name,type,offset)
● Addwidth(table,width)
● Enterproc(table, name new table)

32. Define short circuit code?

Translate the Boole n expression into three-address code without generating code for any of the Boolean
operators and without having the code necessarily evaluate the entire expression. This style of evaluation is
sometimes called short-circuit or jumping code.

33.Give the syntax of case statements?

Switch expression Begin
Case value: statement Case
value: statement

Case value: statement Default :

statement
End

34. Give the 2 attributes of syntax directed translation into 3-address code ?
● E.place, the name that will hold the value of E and
● E.code , the sequence of 3-addr statements evaluating E.

35. Write a short note on declarations?

In a procedure, for each local name, we create a symbol table entry with information like the type and the
relative address of the storage for the name. The relative address consists of an offset from the base of the
static data area or the field for local data in an activation record. The procedure enter (name, type, offset)
creates a symbol table entry.

36. Give the two parts of the basic hashing scheme?

1) A hash table consisting of a fixed array of m pointers to table entries.
2) Table entries organized into m separate linked lists, called b ckets. Each record in the symbol table appears
on exactly one of these lists.

37. Write the grammar for flow-of-control statements?

The following grammar generates the flow-of-control statements, if-then, if-then-else, and while-do
statements.
S □ if E then S1
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| If E then S1 else S2
| While E do S1.

38. Write the 3-addr code for the statements a =b*-c + b*-c?
Three address codes are: a=b*-c + b*-c

T1 = -c T2 = b*T1 T3
= -c T4 = b*T3
T5 = T2+T4 a:= T5.

UNIT V – CODE GENERATION

1. Define code generations with ex?

It is the final phase in compiler mod l and it takes as an input an intermediate representation of the
source program and output produced as equivalent target programs. Then intermediate instructions are each
translated into a sequence of machine instructions that perform the same task.

2. What are the issues in the design of code generators?

o Input to the generator
o Target programs
o Memory management
o Instruction selection
o Register allocation
o Choice of evaluation order
o Approaches to code generation.

3. Give the variety of forms in target program.

● Absolute machine language.
● Reloadable machine language.
● Assembly language.

4. Give the factors of instruction selections.

● Uniformity and completeness of the instruction sets
● Instruction speed and machine idioms
● Size of the instruction sets.
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5. What are the sub problems in register allocation strategies?
During register allocation, we select the set of variables that will reside in register at a point in the
program.
During a subsequent register assignment phase, we pick the specific register that a variable reside in.

6. Give the standard storage allocation strategies.

● Static allocation
● Stack allocation.

7. Define static allocations and stack allocations

Static allocation is defined as lays out for all data objects at compile time.

Names are bound to storage as a program is compiled, so there is no need for a run time support package.
Stack allocation is defined as a process which manages the run time as a Stack. It is based on the idea of a
control stack; storage is organized as a stack, And activation records are pushed and popped as activations
begin and end.

8. Write the addressing mode and associated costs in the target machine.

MODE FORM ADDRESS ADDED

COST
Absolute M M 1
Register R R 0
Indexed c(R) c+contents(R) 1
Indirect register * contents(R) 0
R
Indirect indexed *c(R) contents(c+contents(R)) 1

9. Define basic block and flow graph.

● A basic block is a sequence of consecutive statements in which flow of Control enters at the
beginning and leaves at the end without halt or possibility of branching except at the end.
● A flow graph is defined as the adding of flow of control information to the set of basic blocks making up a
program by constructing a directed graph.
10. Write the step to partition a sequence of 3 address statements into basic blocks.
1. First determine the set of leaders, the first statement of basic blocks.
● The rules we can use are the following.
● The first statement is a leader.
● Any statement that is the target of a conditional or unconditional goto is a leader.
● Any statement that immediately follows a goto or conditional goto statement is a leader.
2. For each leader, its basic blocks consist of the leader and all statements Up to but not including
the next leader or the end of the program.

11. Give the important classes of local transformations on basic blocks

● Structure preservation transformations
● Algebraic transformations.
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12. Describe algebraic transformations.
It can be used to change the set of expressions computed by a basic blocks
into a algebraically equivalent sets. The useful ones are those that simplify the Expressions place expensive
operations by cheaper ones.
X = X+ 0 X = X * 1
13. What is meant by register descriptors and address descriptors?
A register descriptor keeps track of what is currently in each register. It is consulted whenever a new
register is needed.
An address descriptor keeps track of the location where ever the current Value of the name can be
found at run time. The location might be a register, a Stack location, a memory address.

14. What are the actions to perform the code generation algorithms?
● Invoke a function get reg to determine the location L.
● Consult the address descriptor for y to determine y□, the current location of y.
● If the current values of y and/or z have no next uses, are not live on exit from the block, and are in
register, alter the register descriptor.

15. Write the code sequence for the d:=(a-b)+(a-c)+(a-c).

Statement Code generation Register descriptor Address

descriptor
t:=a-b MOV a,R0 R0 contains t t in R0
SUB b,R0
u:=a-c MOV a,R1 R0 contains t t in R0
SUB c,R1 R1 contains u u in R1
v:=t+u ADD R1,R0 R0 contains v u in R1
R1 contains u v in R0
d:=v+u ADD R1,R0 R0 contains d d in R0
MOV R0,d d in R0
and
memory

16. Write the labels on nodes in DAG.

A DAG for a basic block is a directed acyclic graph with the following Labels on nodes:
● Leaves are labeled by unique identifiers, either variable names or constants.
● Interior nodes are labeled by an operator symbol.
● Nodes are also optionally given a sequence of identifiers for labels.

17. Give the applications of DAG.

o Determine which identifiers have their values used in the block.
o Determine which statements compute values that could be used outside the blocks.
o Automatically detect the common sub expression ions
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18. Define Peephole optimization.

A Statement by statement code generation strategy often produces target code that contains
redundant instructions and suboptimal constructs.
“Optimizing” is misleading because there is no guarantee that the resulting code is optimal. It is a method for
trying to improve the performance of the target program by examining the short sequence of target instructions
and replacing this instructions by shorter or faster sequence.

19. Write the characteristics of peephole optimization?

● Redundant-instruction elimination
● Flow-of-control optimizations.
● Algebraic simplifications
● Use of machine idioms

20. What are the structure preserving transformations on basic blocks?

● Common sub-expression elimination
● Dead-code elimination
● Renaming of temporary variables Interchange of two
independent adjacent statement.

21. Define Common sub-expression elimination with ex.

It is defined as the process in which eliminate the statements which has the same expressions. Hence
this basic block may be transformed into the equivalent Block.
Ex:
a : =b + c b
:=a - d c :=b + c
After elimination:
a : =b + c b
:=a - d c :=a

22. Define Dead-code elimination with ex.

It is defined as the process in which the statement x=y+z appear in a basic block, where x is a dead that
is never sub equity used. Then this statement may
be safely removed without changing the value of basic blocks.

23. Define Renaming of temporary variables with ex.

We have the statement :=b + c ,where u is a new temporary variable, and change all uses of this
instance of t to u, then the value of the basic block is not changed.

24. Define reduction in strength with ex.

Reduction in strength replaces expensive operations by equivalent cheaper ones on the target machines.
Certain machine instructions are cheaper than others and can often be used as special cases of more expensive
operators.
Ex:
X^2 is invariably cheaper to implement as x*x than as a call to an exponentiation routine.
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25. Define use of machine idioms.

The target machine may have harder instructions to implement certain specific operations
efficiently. Detecting situations that permit the use of these instructions can reduce execution time
significantly.

26. Define code optimization and optimizing compiler

The term code-optimization refers to techniques a compiler can employ in an attempt to produce a
better object language program than the most obvious for a given source program.
Compilers that apply code-improving transformations are called Optimizing-compilers.