MODULE # 2: COMPILER CONSTRUCTION

INSTRUCTOR: DR. SAKEENA JAVAID

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OUTLINE OF THE TOPICS TO BE COVERED TODAY

 Language definition
 Syntax and semantic Specification
 Using BNF notation to define syntax of a language

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SYNTAX AND SEMANTIC SPECIFICATION
 Syntax and Semantic Specification
 For specifying syntax, we present a widely used notation called Backus-Naur Form or
CFGs.
 For example: if (expression) statement else statement
 Context-free grammar, or grammars are used alternatively here

 (An if-else statement is the concatenation of the keyword if, an opening parenthesis,
an expression, a closing parenthesis, a statement, the keyword else, and another
statement.)

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 Using the variable expr to denote an expression and the variable stmt to denote a statement,
this structuring rule can be expressed as
Stmt if (expr) stmt else stmt
 arrow may be read as “can have the form." Such a rule is called a production
 In a production, lexical elements like the keyword if and the parentheses are called terminals
 Variables like expr and stmt represent sequences of terminals and are called non-terminals.

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SYNTAX AND SEMANTIC SPECIFICATION

 Definition of Grammars:
 A context-free grammar has four components:

1. A set of terminal symbols, sometimes referred to as “tokens." The terminals are the elementary symbols of the
language defined by the grammar.
2. A set of non-terminals, sometimes called “syntactic variables." Each non-terminal represents a set of strings of
terminals, in a manner we shall describe.
3. A set of productions, where each production consists of a nonterminal, called the head or left side of the
production, an arrow, and a sequence of terminals and/or non-terminals, called the body or right side of the
production. The intuitive intent of a production is to specify one of the written forms of a construct; if the head
nonterminal represents a construct, then the body represents a written form of the construct.
4. A designation of one of the non-terminals as the start symbol

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SYNTAX AND SEMANTIC SPECIFICATION
 Few Conventions for specifying Productions
 Specifying grammars by listing their productions, with the productions for the start
symbol listed first
 We assume that digits, signs such as < and <=, and boldface strings such as while are
terminals
 An italicized name is a nonterminal, and any non-italicized name or symbol may be
assumed to be a terminal
 For notational convenience, productions with the same nonterminal as the head can
have their bodies grouped, with the alternative bodies separated by the symbol |,
which we read as “or."
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 Example:
 Several examples here use expressions consisting of digits and plus
and minus signs; e.g., expressions such as 9-5+2, 3-1, or 7.
 Since a plus or minus sign must appear between two digits, we refer
to such expressions as “lists of digits separated by plus or minus
signs."
 The following grammar describes the syntax of these expressions.
The productions are:

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SYNTAX AND SEMANTIC SPECIFICATION

 The bodies of the three productions with nonterminal list as head equivalently can be grouped:

 According to our conventions, the terminals of the grammar are the symbols

 The non-terminals are the italicized names list and digit, with list being the start symbol because its
productions are given first
 We say a production is for a nonterminal if the nonterminal is the head of the production.
 A string of terminals is a sequence of zero or more terminals. The string of zero terminals, is called the
empty string.

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 Derivations:

 A grammar derives strings by beginning with the start symbol

 By repeatedly replacing a nonterminal by the body of a production for that nonterminal
 The terminal strings that can be derived from the start symbol form the language defined by the grammar
 Example 1: The language defined by the grammar of previous Example consists of lists of digits separated by plus and
minus signs.
 The ten productions for the nonterminal digit allow it to stand for any of the terminals 0, 1, …, 9.
 From production (3), a single digit by itself is a list. Productions (1) and (2) express the rule that any list followed by a plus
or minus sign and then another digit makes up a new list
(1)
(2)
(3)
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 Productions (1) to (4) are all we need to define the desired language
 For example, we can deduce that 9-5+2 is a list as follows
a. 9 is a list by production (3), since 9 is a digit
b. 9-5 is a list by production (2), since 9 is a list and 5 is a digit
c. 9-5+2 is a list by production (1), since 9-5 is a list and 2 is a digit

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 Example 2:

 A somewhat different sort of list is the list of parameters in a function call

 In Java, the parameters are enclosed within parentheses, as in the call max(x, y) of function max with parameters x and y.
 One nuance of such lists is that an empty list of parameters may be found between the terminals ( and ).
 We may start to develop a grammar for such sequences with the productions:
 Note that the second possible body for optparams (“optional parameter list") is which stands for the empty string of symbols
 That is, optparams can be replaced by the empty string, so a call can consist of a function name followed by the two-terminal string ()
 Notice that the productions for params are analogous to those for list in Example 1,
 with comma in place of the arithmetic operator + or -, and param in place of digit.

call  id ( optparams )
optparams  params |
params  params , param | param 11
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 Parsing:

 Parsing is the problem of taking a string of terminals and figuring out how to derive it from the start symbol of the
grammar
 If it cannot be derived from the start symbol of the grammar, then reporting syntax errors within the string
 A parse tree pictorially shows how the start symbol of a grammar derives a string in the language. If nonterminal A has a production
 A XYZ, then a parse tree may have an interior node labeled A with three children labeled X, Y , and Z, from left to right
 Formally, given a context-free grammar, a parse tree according to the grammar is a tree with the following properties :
 The root is labeled by the start symbol
 Each leaf is labeled by a terminal or by
 Each interior node is labeled by a non-terminal

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 If A is the nonterminal labeling some interior node

 i.e., X1, X2, …, Xn are the labels of the children of that node from left to right, then there must be a production A
X1, X2, Xn
 Here, X1, X2, …, Xn each stand for a symbol that is either a terminal or a nonterminal
 As a special case, if A is a production,
 then a node labeled A may have a single child labeled

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 Tree Terminology:
 A tree consists of one or more nodes
 Nodes may have labels, which in this book typically will be grammar symbols
 When we draw a tree, we often represent the nodes by these labels only
 Exactly one node is the root
 All nodes except the root have a unique parent; the root has no parent
 When we draw trees, we place the parent of a node above that node and draw an edge between them. The root is then the highest (top)
node.
 If node N is the parent of node M, then M is a child of N. The children of one node are called siblings. They have an order, from the left,
and when we draw trees, we order the children of a given node in this manner.
 A node with no children is called a leaf. Other nodes | those with one or more children | are interior nodes.
 A descendant of a node N is either N itself, a child of N, a child of a child of N, and so on, for any number of levels.
 We say node N is an ancestor of node M if M is a descendant of N

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 Example 3: The derivation of 9-5+2 in previous Example is illustrated by the tree

 Each node in the tree is labeled by a grammar symbol

 An interior node and its children correspond to a production

 the interior node corresponds to the head of the production, the children to the body.

 the root is labeled list, the start symbol of the grammar

 The children of the root are labeled, from left to right, list, +, and digit.

 Note that in the production (on right side); the left child of the root is similar to the root, with a child labeled +
instead of -.

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 In the Fig. the yield is 9-5+2; for convenience, all the leaves
are shown at the bottom level
 Another definition of the language generated by a grammar is
as the set of strings
 that can be generated by some parse tree.

 The process of finding a parse tree for a given string of

terminals is called parsing

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 Ambiguity
 Grammar can have more than one parse trees
 Showing the multiple representations of the grammar, we normally find a terminal string
 Strings having more than one interpretation, we need to design unambiguous grammars with
additional rules
 Example: We used a single non terminal string and did not distinguish between list and digits

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 For example:
 9-2+5 can have more than one parse trees and can be interpreted as
 Any two parse trees have the two ways of parenthesizing the expression
(9-5)+2 and 9-(5+2); evaluate the result please … ???
Previous grammar does not not allow this interpretation.

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Parse trees of the newly constructed grammars

Order of evaluation: Order of evaluation:

left to right right to left

Figure: Parse trees of the grammars

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 Associativity of Operators
 By convention the expression
 9+5+2 is equivalent to 9+(5+2) and
 9-5-2 is equivalent to 9-(5-2)
 How? When the operand has some operators on its both sides, there are some rules for
making the decision regarding their selection.
 We say operator + associate to its left
 In most programming languages, the operators: +, -, / and * are left associative.

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 Associativity of Operators
 Some common operators like exponentiation are right associative
 Assignment operators = in C and its descendants are right associative;
 for example the expression a=b=c is treated as a=(b=c)
 String like a=b=c with a right associative operator are generated by the following grammar:

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 Contrast between left-associative and right associative operators is shown below

 Left-associative operator’s parse tree grows down towards left
 Right-associative operator’s parse tree grows down towards right

Figure: Parse trees for the left and right associative operators 22
SYNTAX AND SEMANTIC SPECIFICATION

 Precedence of Operators
 Consider the expression 9+5*2
 Has two interpretations: (9+5)*2 and 9+(5*2); is there any ways to solve this?
 As operators + and * lie on the same level, now which new rules are required …??

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 In ordinary arithmetic, multiplication and division have higher precedence over

addition and subtraction
 So we can rewrite the expressions as

9+(5*2) and (9*5)+2;

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PRACTICE TASK # 2

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SYNTAX AND SEMANTIC SPECIFICATION

 Syntax-Directed Translation
 It is done by attaching rules or program fragments to productions in the grammar

 Here expr is the sum of two sub-expressions

 Here is the instance of expr
 Why is used here??
 How translation of expr will be performed… ??

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 By building syntax trees… (will see later)

 By using the conversion of infix notation into postfix notations
 Two concepts are used for syntax-directed translation
 Attributes: quality associated with a programming construct, for example: data types, number
of instructions in generated code or the location of the first instruction in the code of the
construct
 Syntax-Directed translation schemes: A scheme for attaching program segments to the
productions of the grammar (program segments are executed when the production is used
during the syntax analysis)

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SYNTAX AND SEMANTIC SPECIFICATION

 Syntax-directed translations are used to translate infix expressions into postfix notation, to evaluate the
expressions and to build the syntax trees for programming constructs.
 Postfix Notation
 Considering an expression E

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 For example:
 (9-5)+2 is 95-2+
 The constants 9, 5, and 2 will be interpreted as the same by rule 1.
 Then 9-2 will be translated as 95- by rule two
 Parenthesis will be translated by rule 3 including the rule two for internal processing

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 Examples:
 How to convert 9-(5+2)into postfix??
 Evaluate the result … ??
 No parenthesis are required for postfix notations, scan from left to right
 How to convert 952+-3* into infix form … ??

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 Synthesized attributes:
 Associating qualities with programming constructs
 Values and types with expressions
 Attributes with terminals and non terminals
 Rules to productions, how they are evaluated (like in parse trees, nodes relationship with its
child nodes)

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 Formal Definition

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 Attributes can be evaluated as follows:

 Constructing a parse tree for the given string x
 Apply semantic rules to evaluate the attributes at each node in the parse tree

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Thanks 

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