Note:

Engineering Design Content: The course project which requires the students to construct a fully functional compiler, requires them to synthesize knowledge of programming, algorithms and data structures learned in earlier courses. The objectives and high-level design of the project are provided, but the students are required to design interfaces between different components of the compiler. Students are required to come up with tests cases for their projects, and to ensure that they will work on "hidden" test cases. Engineering Design Considerations: None

Counts as:

Experimental Course Offered:

Fall 2007, Fall 2008, Fall 2009

Catalog Description:

The design and construction of compilers and other translators. Topics include compilation goals, organization of a translator, grammars and languages, symbol tables, lexical analysis, syntax analysis (parsing), error handling, intermediate and final code generation, assemblers, interpreters, and an introduction to optimization. Emphasis is on engineering, from scratch, a compiler or interpreter for a small programming language - typically a C or Pascal subset. Projects involve the stepwise implementation (and documentation) of such a system.

Learning Outcomes:

1. an understanding of the terminology, representation and use of formal languages and grammars. [a]
2. an understanding of terminology and techniques of Lexical analysis, parsing, semantic processing, code generation, and optimization. [a,e]
3. an ability to design and implement a compiler, translator or interpreter for a small language based on their knowledge of (i) and (ii). [a,b,c,e,k]

Lecture Outline:

Assessment Method:

All course outcomes are covered on tests and in the course project, with outcome (iii) primarily tested by the project.