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A practical tool kit for making portable compilers

Authors:

Andrew S. Tanenbaum,

Hans van Staveren,

E. G. Keizer,

Johan W. StevensonAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 26, Issue 9

Pages 654 - 660

https://doi.org/10.1145/358172.358182

Published: 01 September 1983 Publication History

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Abstract

The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is an integrated collection of programs designed to simplify the task of producing portable (cross) compilers and interpreters. For each language to be compiled, a program (called a front end) must be written to translate the source program into a common intermediate code. This intermediate code can be optimized and then either directly interpreted or translated to the assembly language of the desired target machine. The paper describes the various pieces of the tool kit in some detail, as well as discussing the overall strategy.

References

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Graham, S.L. Table-driven code generation. Computer 13, 8 (August 1980), 25-34. A discussion of systematic ways to do code generation, in particular, the idea of having a table with templates that match parts of the parse tree and convert them into machine instructions.

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[2]

Haddon, B.K. and Waite, W.M. Experience with the universal intermediate language Janus. Software Practice and Experience 8, 5 (Sept.- Oct. 1978), 601-616. An intermediate language for use with Algol 68, Pascal, etc. is described. The paper discusses some of the problems encountered and how they were dealt with.

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Johnson, S.C. A portable compiler: Theory and practice. Ann. ACM Symp. Prin. Prog. Lang., Jan. 1978. A cogent discussion of the portable C compiler. Particularly interesting are the author's thoughts on the value of computer science theory.

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Leverett, B.W, Cattell, R.G.G., Hobbs, S.O., Newcomer, J.M., Reiner, A.H, Schatz, B.R., and Wulf, W.A. An overview of the productionquality compiler-compiler project. Computer 13, 8 (August 1980), 38- 49. PQCC is a system for building compilers similar in concept but different in details from the Amsterdam Compiler Kit. The paper describes the intermediate representations used and the code generation strategy.

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Lowry, E.S. and Medlock, C.W. Object code optimization. Comm. ACM 12, 1 (Jan. 1969), 13-22. A classic paper on global object code optimization. It covers data flow analysis, common subexpressions, code motion, register allocation, and other techniques.

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Steel, T.B., Jr. UNCOL:the myth and the fact. In Ann. Bey. Auto. Prog. Goodman, R. (Ed.), Vol. 2., (1960), 325-344. An introduction to the UNCOL idea by its originator.

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Steel, T.B., lr. A first version of UNCOL. Proc. Western }oint Comp. Conf., (1961), 371-377. The first detailed proposal for an UNCOL. By current standards it is a primitive language, but it is interesting for its historical perspective.

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[9]

Tanenbaum, A.S., van Staveren, H., and Stevenson, J.W. Using peephole optimization on intermediate code. ACM Trans. Prog. Lang. and Sys. 3, 1 (Jan. 1982), 21-36. A detailed description of a table-driven peephole optimizer. The driving table provides a list of patterns to match as well as the replacement text to use for each successful match.

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[10]

Tauenbaum, A.S., Stevenson, J.W., Keizer, E.G., and van Staveren, H. Description of an experimental machine architecture for use with block structured languages, lnformatica Rapport 81, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 1983. The defining document for EM.

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Tanenbanm, A.S. Implications of structured programming for machine architecture. Comm. ACM 21, 3 (March 1978), 237-246. The background and motivation for the design of EM. This early version emphasized the idea of interpreting the intermediate code (then called EM-1) rather than compiling it.

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Wasserman ALaemmel RPereira JMosses P(2024)Design of Software Representation Languages: A Historical PerspectiveProceedings of the 17th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/3687997.3695649(104-112)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687997.3695649
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Index Terms

A practical tool kit for making portable compilers
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Translator writing systems and compiler generators

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Published In

Communications of the ACM Volume 26, Issue 9

Sept. 1983

76 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/358172

Editor:
Peter J. Denning
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 September 1983

Published in CACM Volume 26, Issue 9

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Abstract

References

Cited By

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A formalism for translator interactions

Compiler algorithm language (CAL): an interpreter and compiler

Making a Compiler Easily Portable

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