Compiler Design and Construction - Old Questions

8.  What are the compiler construction tools? Explain.

For the construction of a compiler, the compiler writer uses different types of software tools that are known as compiler construction tools. These tools make use of specialized languages for specifying and implementing specific components, and most of them use sophisticated algorithms. The tools should hide the details of the algorithm used and produce component in such a way that they can be easily integrated into the rest of the compiler. Some of the most commonly used compiler construction tools are:

1. Parser generators: They automatically produce syntax analyzers from a grammatical description of a programming language.

2. Scanner generators: They produce lexical analyzers from a regular-expression description of the tokens of a language.

3. Syntax-directed translation engine: They produce collections of routines for walking a parse tree and generating intermediate code.

4. Code-generator generators: They produce a code generator from a collection of rules for translating each operation of the intermediate language into the machine language for a target machine.

5. Data-flow analysis engines: They facilitate the gathering of information about how the data is transmitted from one part of the program to another. For code optimization, data-flow analysis is a key part.

6. Compiler-construction toolkits: They provide an integrated set of routines for constructing various phases of a compiler.