Summary

This course will provide students with an introduction to modern compiler construction. The first two-thirds of the course will cover fundamental topics, and will be based on the text book Modern Compiler Implementation in Java (Second edition), Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA, 2002, by Andrew W. Appel, with Jens Palsberg). The remaining third of the course covers advanced topics of current interest.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Distinguish formal and practical properties of different approaches to parsing
• Understand and implement various techniques to parse source code
• Implement a basic compiler
• Use visitors to process an abstract syntax tree (AST)
• Transform an AST to intermediate representation (IR)
• Perform peephole optimization on the IR
• Generate target code (eg Java bytecode) from IR

Grading

The final grade will be based 10% on exercises, 30% on a team project and 60% on the final exam.

Schedule

NB: The lecture notes are based partly on similar courses offered by Profs. Jens Palsberg (CS132) and Tony Hosking (CS502).