The Task of a Compiler

• The main task of a compiler is to map programs written in a given source language into a target language
• Often, the source language is a programming language and the target language is a machine language
• Some exceptions: Source-to-source translators, machine-code translation, data manipulation in XML
• Part of the task of a compiler is also to detect, whether a given program conforms to the rules of the source language.
• A specification of a compiler consists of
  • A specification of its source and target languages
  • A specification of a mapping between them