Intermediate Code

Generation
 Introduction
• The front end of a compiler
translates a source program into
an independent intermediate
code.
• The back end uses the
intermediate code to generate
the target code.

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Why Generate Intermediate Code
• Enhances portability
• Without intermediate code new compiler would have been required for each
different machine.
• Only one optimizer is needed for n machines.
• Without intermediate code we would need n optimizer for n different
machines.
• Easier to apply source code modifications to improve the performance
by optimizing the intermediate code.

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 Types of Intermediate Code
• Design of an intermediate representation varies.
Intermediate Code

(a+b)*(a+b+c)
Linear Form Tree Form

Postfix Notation Three address code Syntax Tree Directed Acyclic Graph

𝑡1 =𝑎+𝑏
ab+ab+c+* * *

+
+ +
+
a b a + c
a b
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b c
Three Address Code
• A three address statement is an abstract form of intermediate code.
• Three-address code is a sequence of statements of the form

where x, y, and z are names, constants or compiler-generated

temporary names.
• There can be at most one operator on the right side of an instruction.

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Three-Address Code
• Any source-language expression is converted into a sequence of
three-address code.

• Use of names for the intermediate values computed by a program

allows three-address code to be rearranged easily.

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Three-Address Code
• Three-address code is a linearized representation of a syntax tree or a
DAG.
• Explicit names correspond to the interior nodes of the graph.
+
𝑡 1 =𝑏 −𝑐
+ *
𝑡 2=𝑎 ∗ 𝑡 1

* 𝑡 3=𝑎 +𝑡 2
d

a
𝑡 4=𝑡 1 ∗ 𝑑
-
𝑡 5 =𝑡 3+ 𝑡 4

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b c 7
Addresses and Instruction
• Three-address code is built from two concepts
• Addresses
• Instruction
• An address can be
• A name
• In implementation source-name is replaced by a pointer to symbol table.
• A constant
• A compiler-generated temporary

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Instructions Forms
• Assignment Instructions of the form

where, op is a binary arithmetic or logical operator.

x,y and z are addresses.

• Assignment Instructions of the form

where op is a unary operator – unary minus, logical negation, shift

operation and conversion operators.

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Instruction Forms
• Copy instructions of the form

where x is assigned the value of y.

• An unconditional jump

The three-address instruction with label L is the next to be executed.

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Instruction Forms
• Conditional jumps of the form

Executes the instruction with label next if is true and false.

• Conditional jumps of the form

where is a relational operator such as <,==,>=.

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Instructions Forms
• Procedure calls and returns are implemented using the following
instructions
• for parameters
• for procedure call
• for function call
• is optional
• Typical use

generated as part of a call of the procedure

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Instructions Forms
• Indexed copy instructions of the form

The instruction sets x to the value in the location memory units

beyond location .

The instruction sets the content of the location units beyond to the
value of .

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Instructions Forms
• Address and pointer assignments of the form

The instruction sets the value of x to be the location of y.

The instruction sets the value of x to be the content of location y.

The instruction sets the value of object pointed to by x to the value

of y.

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Implementation of Three-Address
Code
• The instructions are implemented as objects or as records
• With fields for operator and operands.
• Three such representations
• Quadruples
• Triples
• Indirect Triples

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Quadruples
• A quadruples has four fields
• op

• The field contains an internal code for the operator.

• Representation of instruction

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Quadruples
• Exceptions of the rule
• Instructions with unary operations -
• ⁡is not used.
• Assignment operation
• is not used
• is .
• Operands like use neither nor result
• Conditional and unconditional jumps put the target label in .

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Quadruples
• Consider the statement

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Triples
• Contains only three fields

• We refer to the result of an operation by its position.

• Parenthesized numbers represent pointers pointing to positions.

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Triples
• Consider the statement

0
1
2
3
4
5

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Triples
• A ternary operation like requires two entries in the triple structure.

𝑥 [ 𝑖 ] =𝑦 𝑥=𝑦 [𝑖 ]

0 0
1 1

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Indirect Triples
• Consist of a listing of pointers to triples, rather than a listing of triples
themselves.

35 (0)
36 (1) 0

37 (2) 1

38 (3) 2

39 (4) 3

40 (5) 4
5

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Comparison of the Implementations
• In quadruples, we can move the instructions around without changing any
temporary values.
• But it requires more space than others.

• In triples, the result of an operation is referred by position. So moving an

instruction may require to change all references to that result.
• It takes less memory than others.

• In indirect triples, we can move the instructions without touching the actual
triples.
• But it requires two memory access.
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Backpatching
• We can’t use loops in three-address code.
• Instead we will use jumps.
• But where should the program jump?
• We can use labels to indicate jump positions.
• We will use a method named backpatching mark the labels.

Backpatching is a method where we left the target of jump temporarily

unspecified and fill them when the proper label can be determined.

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Backpatching
• Consider the statement
if (a<b) then t = 1
else t = 0

Address Three address code

101 104
if a<b goto ______
102 t =0
103 105
goto ______
104 t= 1
105 ….

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Backpatching (Conditional Address Code
Statement) 1 4
if a<b goto _____
2 t1 = 0
• Consider the next example 3 5
goto ____
4 t1 = 1
5 8
if c<d goto ______
a<b and c<d or e<f 6 t2 = 0
7 9
goto______
8 t2 = 1
9 12
if e<f goto ______
10 t3 = 0
11 13
goto ______
12 t3 = 1
13 t4 = t1 and t2
14 t5 = t4 or t3
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Backpatching (while Loop)
• Consider the statement

L: if E==0 goto
S
F GOTO L
E :…

T
L: if E goto
goto

S :S

:…

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Backpatching (while Loop)
• Consider the statement

Address Code
101 103
if a<b goto ______
102 106
goto ______
103 t = y+z
104 x=t
105 101
goto ______
106 ……

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Backpatching (for Loops)

for(E1 ;E2 ;E3 )

E1

S F

E3 T

E2
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Backpatching (for Loops)
• Consider the statement

Address Code
320 i=0
321 323
if i<10 goto _____
322 328
goto _____
323
324
325
326
327 321
goto ______
328 ……
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Backpatching (switch case) Address Code
1 t = i+j
• Consider the switch-case 2 12
goto ______
statement 3
4
switch (i+j){
5 15
goto ______
case(1):
a = b+c 6
break 7
case(2): 8 15
goto ______
p = q+r
9
break;
default: 10
x = y+z 11 15
goto ______
12 if goto _____ 3
13 if goto _____ 6
14 9
goto _____
15 ……
31
Addressing Array Elements
• In general array elements are numbered from 0, 1, …, n-1 for an array
with n elements.
• If the width of each array element is w, then the ith element of array
A begins in location

where base is the relative address of the storage allocated for the
array. (relative address of A[0])

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Addressing Array Elements
• The formula can be generalized for multi-dimensional array.
• For two dimensional array, the location of A[i1][i2] is

• In k dimensions, the formula is

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Addressing Array Elements
• Array elements need not be numbered starting at 0.
• In a one-dimensional array, elements are numbered low, low+1, …. ,
high and base is the relative address of A[low].
• Then the address of A[i]

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Addressing Array Elements
• A multi-dimensional array is always stored in a one-dimensional
memory.
• So it is converted.
• A two-dimensional array is normally stored in two forms
• Row-major order
• Column-major order

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Addressing Array Elements
• Consider the array A with 2 rows and 3 columns
0,0 0,1 0,2
1,0 1,1 1,2

A[0,0] A[0,0]
A[0,1] A[1,0]
A[0,2] A[0,1]
A[1,0] A[1,1]
A[1,1] A[0,2]
A[1,2] A[1,2]

Row Major Column Major

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Array Element Addressing
• Let’s see how array element are accessed using three address code.
• Consider a 2D array A with 10 rows and 20 columns.
• We want to access A[i][j].
• Put simply

• We will use row-major order.

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Addressing array elements
𝑥= 𝐴 [ 𝑖 ] [ 𝑗 ]

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Intermediate Code for Procedures
• Consider the function

• In the main function we call it as:

The assignment might translate into following:

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Syntax Directed Translation to
Intermediate Code
• Now let’s see how we can create intermediate codes from the
annotated parse tree.

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Postfix Notation
• Consider the grammar with semantic rules

Grammar Semantic Rules

𝐸 → 𝐸 +𝑇 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑡 ( + )
𝐸 →𝑇{ }
𝑇 → 𝑇 ∗ 𝐹 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑡 ( ∗ )
𝑇 → 𝐹{ }
𝐹 → 𝑛𝑢𝑚{ 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑡 ( 𝑛𝑢𝑚 . 𝑣𝑎𝑙 ) }
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Postfix Notation
E
• Let’s try with an example

E + T
• We will first create the parse tree.
T T * F

F F num

num num

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Postfix Notation
• Let’s traverse the tree and see how postfix notation is created.
E

E + T

T T * F Output Buffer
2 3 4 * +

F F num

num num

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Syntax Tree
Function
Pointer to create a new node.
to Left
a node
child pointer Value Right child pointer
• Let’s re-design the semantic rules.
Grammar Semantic Rules

𝐸 → 𝐸 +𝑇 𝐸.𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟=𝑚𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑑𝑒(𝐸1 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 ,′+′,𝑇 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟)

𝐸 → 𝑇 𝐸 . 𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟=𝑇 . 𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟
𝑇 → 𝑇 ∗ 𝐹 𝑇 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 =𝑚𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑑𝑒 ( 𝑇 1 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 , ∗ , 𝐹 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 )
′ ′

𝑇 → 𝐹 𝑇 . 𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 =𝐹 . 𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟
𝐹 → 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝐹.𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟=𝑚𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑑𝑒(𝑛𝑢𝑙𝑙,𝑖𝑑.𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒,𝑛𝑢𝑙𝑙)

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 Syntax Tree
• Let’s use the previous example. Apply Reduction with
E
Grammar Semantic Rules Apply Reduction with

𝐸E → +𝐸 +𝑇
T
𝐸.𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟=𝑚𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑑𝑒(𝐸 1 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 ,′+′,𝑇 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟)
Apply Reduction with

𝐸 → 𝑇 𝐸 . 𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟=𝑇500. 𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 100 + 400

𝑇T → 𝑇T ∗ 𝐹
* 𝑇 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟F=𝑚𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑑𝑒 ( 𝑇 1 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 , ∗ , 𝐹 .𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 )
′ ′

𝑇F
→ F
𝐹 𝑇 .num 𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 =𝐹 . 𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟 400 200 * 300
𝐹 → 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝐹.𝑛𝑝𝑡𝑟=𝑚𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑑𝑒(𝑛𝑢𝑙𝑙,𝑖𝑑.𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒,𝑛𝑢𝑙𝑙)
num num
100 null 2 null 200 null 3 null 300 null 4 null

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Three Address Code Generates a three-address code

Grammar Semantic Rules

• Consider the grammar Creates a new
Temporary variable

placeholder / name of the variable

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Three-address Code
• Let’s generate code for the expression
S

𝑖𝑑 = E

𝑥
E + T

T T * F

F F 𝑖𝑑
𝑐
𝑖𝑑 𝑖𝑑
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 Three-address Code
S 𝑡 1 =𝑏 ∗ 𝑐
𝑡 2 =𝑎 + 𝑡 1
𝑥 =𝑡 2
𝑖𝑑 = E 𝐸 . 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒=𝑡 2

𝑥
Grammar Semantic Rules E 𝐸 . 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒=𝑎 + T T . 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒=𝑡 1

T 𝑇 . 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒=𝑏 * F 𝐹 . 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒=𝑐
T 𝑇 . 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒=𝑎
F 𝐹 . 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒=𝑏
F 𝐹 . 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒=𝑎 𝑖𝑑
𝑖𝑑 𝑐
𝑖𝑑
𝑏
𝑎
48
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Three-address Code (while loop)
Production Semantic Rule

• sequence of three-address codes.

• returns a new label everytime called.

S.begin

S.after
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Self Study
• Syntax Directed Definitions for Flow-of-Control Statements

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 End

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