Syntax Directed Analysis and The Compiler Compiler

Abstract

The Compiler Compiler is the procedure to define an input and an output language as formally as possible, to describe the translation algorithm of a compiler simple and clear, and to generate compilers in a short time easily by means of a computer. As one method, we have constructed the Compiler Oriented Language COL suitable to describe compilers. The compiler described in COL parses an input string in the manner of the Syntax directed analysis, interprets the resulting syntactic structure and produces the output string. In this paper, we discuss two methods of the Syntax directed analysis, Top-down analysis and Bottom-up analysis, and the Syntax Statement of COL in which the parsing procedure of a compiler is described. As a result, it may be said that the resulting compiler described in COL can accept ALGOL programs and produce the object programs in symbolic language or in machine language, and that the parsing time is about 50 percent of the whole compiling time on the average.