Introduction to Formal Languages and Compilers

Catalog description

A course on formal languages theory and compilers. Topics may include, but are not limited to: regular expressions; finite automata; context-free grammars; predictive parsing; LR parsing; abstract syntax; type systems and type-checking; stack layout and activation records; intermediate representations; control-flow graphs; static-single assignment (SSA) form; dataflow/liveness analysis; register allocation; garbage collection/runtimes; the LLVM compiler infrastructure. Over the course of the semester, students will implement a compiler for a small imperative programming language, targeting an intermediate representation such as LLVM. This course involves a significant amount of programming.