Final Exam Topics

Basic ideas of scanning and parsing

• including, e.g., writing a CFG for a language, but not including LL(1) parsing

Symbol-Table Management

• static scoping
  • scoping rules for Java vs for C--
  • identifying multiply declared names
  • matching uses to corresponding declarations
  • implementation: list of hashtables and hashtable of lists
    how the two approaches work, trade-offs in efficiency, extending the approaches to handle new language constructs
• dynamic scoping
  • matching uses to corresponding declaration

Type Checking

• type checking the constructs of the language used for the project
• extensions to handle new constructs

Runtime Storage Management

• general storage layout (stack, heap, static data area)
• activation records
  manipulation of activation records on:
  • method call
  • method entry
  • method return
• access to non-local variables
  • for parameters, locals, globals
  • access links and displays for languages with nested subprograms

Parameter-Passing Modes

• call-by-value
• call-by-reference
• call-by-value-result
• call-by-name

both from a language-design point of view and a compiler-writer's point of view

Code Generation

• generating code for the constructs of the language used for the project
• extensions to handle new constructs
• numeric and control-flow approaches to generating code for boolean expressions

Optimization

• goals (safety and profitability)
• peephole optimizations
• copy propagation
• loop optimizations
  • moving loop-invariant computations out of the loop
  • strength reduction in for loops