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A compiler is likely to perform some or all of the following operations, often called phases: preprocessing, lexical analysis, parsing, semantic analysis (syntax-directed translation), conversion of input programs to an intermediate representation, code optimization and machine specific code generation.
The problem of compiling a self-compiling compiler has been called the chicken-or-egg problem in compiler design, and bootstrapping is a solution to this problem. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Bootstrapping is a fairly common practice when creating a programming language .
Most compilers are organized into three stages: a front end, an optimizer, and a back end. The front end is responsible for understanding the program. It makes sure a program is valid and transforms it into an intermediate representation, a data structure used by the compiler to represent
When code generation occurs at runtime, as in just-in-time compilation (JIT), it is important that the entire process be efficient with respect to space and time. For example, when regular expressions are interpreted and used to generate code at runtime, a non-deterministic finite-state machine is often generated instead of a deterministic one, because usually the former can be created more ...
Most compilers have at least the following compiler phases (which therefore occur at compile-time): syntax analysis, semantic analysis, and code generation.During optimization phases, constant expressions in the source code can also be evaluated at compile-time using compile-time execution, which reduces the constant expressions to a single value.
An early example of cross compilation was AIMICO, where a FLOW-MATIC program on a UNIVAC II was used to generate assembly language for the IBM 705, which was then assembled on the IBM computer. [7] The ALGOL 68C compiler generated ZCODE output, that could then be either compiled into the local machine code by a ZCODE translator or run interpreted.
A multi-pass compiler is a type of compiler that processes the source code or abstract syntax tree of a program several times. This is in contrast to a one-pass compiler, which traverses the program only once. Each pass takes the result of the previous pass as the input, and creates an intermediate output.
Tombstone diagram representing an Ada compiler written in C that produces machine code. Representation of the process of bootstrapping a C compiler written in C, by compiling it using another compiler written in machine code. To explain, the lefthand T is a C compiler written in C that produces machine code.