Immersing students in Java and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), Introduction to Compiler Construction in a Java World enables a deep understanding of the Java programming language and its implementation. The text focuses on design, organization, and testing, helping students learn good software engineering skills and become better programmers. The book covers all of the standard compiler topics, including lexical analysis, parsing, abstract syntax trees, semantic analysis, code generation, and register allocation. The authors also demonstrate how JVM code can be translated to a register machine, specifically the MIPS architecture. In addition, they discuss recent strategies, such as just-in-time compiling and hotspot compiling, and present an overview of leading commercial compilers. Each chapter includes a mix of written exercises and programming projects. By working with and extending a real, functional compiler, students develop a hands-on appreciation of how compilers work, how to write compilers, and how the Java language behaves. They also get invaluable practice working with a non-trivial Java program of more than 30,000 lines of code.
Compilation Compilers Why Should We Study Compilers? How Does a Compiler Work? The Phases of Compilation An Overview of the j-- to JVM Compiler The j-- Compiler Source Tree The Organization of This Book Lexical Analysis Introduction Scanning Tokens Regular Expressions Finite State Automata Nondeterministic Finite-State Automata (NFA) vs. Deterministic Finite-State Automata (DFA) Regular Expressions to NFA NFA to DFA A Minimal DFA JavaCC: A Tool for Generating Scanners Parsing Introduction Context-Free Grammars and Languages Top-down Deterministic Parsing Bottom-up Deterministic Parsing Parser Generation Using JavaCC Type Checking Introduction The j--Types j-- Symbol Tables Pre-Analysis of j-- Programs Analysis of j-- Programs The Visitor Pattern and the AST Traversal Mechanism Programming Language Design and Symbol Table Structure Attribute Grammars JVM Code Generation Introduction Generating Code for Classes and Their Members Generating Code for Control and Logical Expressions Generating Code for Message Expressions, Field Selection and Array Expressions Generating Code for Assignment and Similar Operations Generating Code for String Concatenation Generating Code for Casts Translating JVM Code to MIPS Code Introduction SPIM and the MIPS Architecture Our Translator Register Allocation Introduction Naive Register Allocation Local Register Allocation Global Register Allocation Celebrity Compilers Introduction The Java HotSpot Compiler The Eclipse Compiler for Java (ECJ) The GNU Java Compiler (GCJ) Microsoft C