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Compiler Design Lexical Analysis

The document discusses the role of lexical analysis in compiler design. It explains that the lexical analyzer tokenizes the source program by separating it into tokens which are then passed to the parser. It describes tokens as pairs of a token name and optional value. Regular expressions are used to formally specify token patterns. The lexical analyzer generates a symbol table and detects lexical errors. It also discusses topics like input buffering, token attributes, transition diagrams, and lexical analyzer generators like Lex.

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Bhaskar P
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78 views24 pages

Compiler Design Lexical Analysis

The document discusses the role of lexical analysis in compiler design. It explains that the lexical analyzer tokenizes the source program by separating it into tokens which are then passed to the parser. It describes tokens as pairs of a token name and optional value. Regular expressions are used to formally specify token patterns. The lexical analyzer generates a symbol table and detects lexical errors. It also discusses topics like input buffering, token attributes, transition diagrams, and lexical analyzer generators like Lex.

Uploaded by

Bhaskar P
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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COMPILER DESIGN

BCA 5th Semester 2020


Topic: Lexical Analysis

Sakhi Bandyopadhyay
Department of Computer Science and BCA
Kharagpur College
The role of lexical analyzer

token
Source To semantic
Lexical Analyzer Parser
program 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 Compiler lex.yy.c
program
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
Thank You

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