7 Tools Used in Compiler Construction and Why You Should Care

 

A compiler is any program that translates code written in one programming language into code written in another programming language, usually to be able to execute the translated code on some sort of computer processor. Compilers play an essential role in software development, as they allow programmers to use whatever programming language best suits their needs without worrying about how their code will be executed by computers or whether other developers can run it on their systems. The following are seven tools used in compiler construction and why you should care.

 

Tool 1: Bison

Bison is a general-purpose parser generator that converts an annotated context-free grammar into a deterministic LR or generalized LR (GLR) parser employing LALR(1) tables. Generalized LR parsers can recognize all context-free languages but may run slower than top-down parsers because they perform more lookahead. Bison is helpful if you have complex grammars that may not fit into a traditional top-down parser or if you have a lot of slightly different inputs to parse. For example, it's often used by programming designers who need to develop multiple languages with similar syntax. It also has some error reporting facilities, which many find helpful in debugging their or others' grammar.

 

Tool 2: Fothers's tool is used to generate lexical analyzers. A lexical analyzer is a program that takes an input character stream as its input and produces a set of tokens extracted from that input stream as output. The lexical analyzer recognizes tokens by finding specific sequences of characters in that input stream. The sequence can be a single character or a group of characters (referred to as an alternative). Flex operates on text files with white space-separated lines. It generates a C source code for one or more state machines responsible for recognizing these tokens from an input stream.

 

Tool 3: Lex

Lex parses source code into tokens, which is a fancy way of saying it breaks a string of characters into smaller pieces. It looks for defined character combinations that indicate something special—like variable names, strings, or keywords. In some languages (like C), you can declare your unique character combination to mean something else, but you don't get to do that with algorithms (like JavaScript). This makes Lex a little less flexible than some other compiler tools.

 

Tool 4: Yacc

Yacc is a tool that will generate code that parses grammar. Grammar is a set of rules, usually written in a text file, describing what type of input is allowed (for example, words can be made up of letters and numbers) and what output they are expected to produce. Yacc is often used to compile context-free grammars into programs that parse strings according to those grammars (at least as long as all language elements match their respective rules). This way, people don't have to worry about won't their own parser, as it's built right into Yacc!

it's 5: C++

C++ has a long history of being used as a systems programming language. Programs like Windows, Mac OS X, Android, and even some game engines are programmed primarily in C++. By using C++ to build your compiler front-end, you get access to many more libraries than you would otherwise have access to. There are other ways to do it (Java/C#), but C++ has proven to be one of the best solutions for systems programming over many years of production usage. In fact, I wrote an entire book about just these kinds of solutions!

 

Tool 6: LLVM

Low-Level Virtual Machine The LLVM is a compiler framework that provides a toolset for creating compilers. It has everything you need to start making your own: front end, back end, assembler, disassembler, and more. The most common use of LLVM is as an alternative to using GCC/G++ directly. The benefits are twofold: It's easier to write a language. It's the front-end for LLVM, rather than GCC/G++; several languages have been written using LLVM: OCaml, D, BitC, and Julia.

 

Tool 7: Rust

This free, open-source language is geared toward creating fast, reliable code. It compiles machine code, making it easier for developers to write faster applications than if they had used C++ or another more common programming language. But Rust isn't just about performance; it also makes it easier for developers to find errors. As a compiled language, every command you create with Rust is checked before it's run on your machine. This means any potential bugs are found before an application goes live instead of waiting until they've found one error and they've everything. This happens all too often when using other languages like C or Python.