This is a course about implementing programming languages. It aims to teach the fundamental aspects of analysing programming languages and mapping them into executable form. At the end of the course, the student should

• be able to define the formal syntax of a programming language,
• be able to define the semantics of a language through interpreters,
• know the internal structure and implementation of compilers,
• be able to write a compiler that translates a simple language into the code of a virtual machine,
• know common frameworks and design patterns used in compiler construction,
• know runtime representations of important programming constructs.

Some less tangible, but nevertheless important goals are:

• Improving the understanding of programming languages,
• understanding trade-offs between expressiveness, simplicity, and performance of programming languages,
• experience the design and implementation of a software project where theory is essential for success.

The course and the tutorials are given in French. Three years go, this course was held in English. You can access the homepage of this former course here.

Students from the Section Systemes de Communication who take the course Compilation of Section Informatique as a replacement of the discontinued course Compilation A will have to do all exercises and the project work up to and including week 8 of the course. They will be in addition assessed with an oral exam at the end of the semester which has as topics all course material presented in the first 8 weeks.

The aim of this project is to write a simple compiler for the programming language misc. The following documents provide details about misc:

• Introduction to misc (ps, ps.gz)
• Concrete syntax
• Abstract syntax
• Attribute grammar

• Part 1: Lexical analysis
• Part 2: Syntax analysis
• Part 3: Abstract syntax tree generation
• Part 4: Semantic analysis
• Part 5: Code generation

The grades of this course will be determined in part by a project which you undertake in a group of 2 or 3 people. It is perfectly OK (even encouraged) that members of one group exchange their code and read each others code. However, it is strictly not permitted to copy code from other groups or from previous years' projects (which are anyway different this year).

This year, all students will have to submit their projects electronically. We will test every submitted program part with copy detection software. If we detect two submissions which are essentially alike, we will question the concerned groups. If one can verify which group copied from the other, the copycat group will receive 0 points for that part of the exercise. If it cannot be verified who copied from whom, all concerned groups will receive 0 points. For that reason, it is very important that you protect the privacy of the code you have written.

Finally, a group which is found to have copied several times will fail the whole project.