Stephen A. Edwards Columbia University Crown
  COMS W4115
Programming Languages and Translators
Spring 2007

General Information

Class meets Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:10 PM - 2:25 PM in 627 Mudd.

Staff

Name Email Office hours Location
Prof. Stephen A. Edwards sedwards@cs.columbia.edu T 3-4, W 4-5 462 CSB
Abhilash Itharaju ai2160@columbia.edu W 3-4 W, Th 4:45-5:45 TA Room
Neesha Subramaniam ns2295@columbia.edu T 4-5, Th 3-4 TA Room
Tae Yano ty2142@columbia.edu M 4-5, W 5-6 TA Room

Overview

The goal of PLT is to teach you both about the structure of computer programming languages and the basics of implementing compilers for such languages.

The course will focus mostly on traditional imperative and object-oriented languages, but will also cover functional and logic programming, concurrency issues, and some aspects of scripting languages. Homework and tests will cover language issues. You will design and implement a language of your own design in a semester-long group project.

While few of you will ever implement a full commercial compiler professionally, the concepts, techniques, and tools you will learn have broad application.

Prerequisites

Java fluency: You will be writing a large Java program and must know the language well.

COMS W3157 Advanced Programming: You will be dividing into teams to build a compiler, so you need to have some idea how to keep this under control. Quick test: you need to know about Makefiles and source code control systems.

COMS W3261 Computability and Models of Computation: You will need an understanding of formal languages and grammar to build the parser and lexical analyzer. Quick test: you must know about regular expressions, context-free grammars, and NFAs.

Schedule

Date Lecture Notes Reading Due
January 17 Intro. to Languages pdf pdf Ch. 1, 2
January 22 Language Design pdf pdf
January 24 Language Processors pdf pdf Ch. 2
January 29 Scripting Languages pdf pdf Ch. 2
January 31 Syntax and Parsing pdf pdf Ch 3, 4
February 5 "
February 7 Getting it right pdf pdf Proposal
February 12 ANTLR pdf pdf Ch. 4
February 14 ASTs pdf pdf Ch. 4, 5
February 19 Names, Scope, and Bindings pdf pdf Ch. 6
February 21 " HW1 pdf
February 26 Control-flow pdf pdf Ch. 6
February 28 "
March 5 Midterm review pdf pdf LRM
March 7 Midterm
March 12-16 Spring Break
March 19 Small Examples pdf pdf App. A
March 21 Types pdf pdf Ch. 6
March 26 "
March 28 Code Generation pdf pdf Ch. 6, 7, 8
April 2 "
April 4 (class canceled)
April 9 Functional Programming pdf pdf
April 11 "
April 16 (no lecture)
April 18 (no lecture)
April 23 Logic Programming pdf pdf HW2 pdf
April 25 Review for final pdf pdf
April 30 Final Exam
May 7 Project reports due

Required Text

Alfred V. Aho, Monica Lam, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman.
Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools.
Addison-Wesley, 2006. Second Edition.

The first edition was long the standard text on compilers; the second edition of the ``dragon book'' has now been updated and continues to be one of the more readable books on the topic. Columbia's own Prof. Al Aho is one of the authors.

Cover of the Dragon Book 2nd edition

Optional Texts

Michael L. Scott.
Programming Language Pragmatics
Morgan Kaufmann, 2006. Second Edition.

A broad-minded book about languages in general, but has less on practical details of compiler construction.

Cover of Programming Language Pragmatics 2nd edition

Andrew W. Appel.
Modern Compiler Implementation in Java.
Cambridge University Press, 1998.

The opposite of Scott: focuses on compiler construction, not language design issues.

Cover of Appel

Steven S. Muchnick
Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation.
Morgan Kaufmann, 1997.

A very extensive book on many aspects of compiler design. Starts about halfway through Appel and goes much farther. Recommended for serious compiler hackers only.

Cover of Muchnick

The Project

The focus of 4115 is the design and implementation of a little language. You will divide into teams and design the goals, syntax, and semantics of your language, and implement a compiler for your language.

Exception: CVN students will do the project individually.

Final Report Outline

This is a critical part of the project and will be a substantial fraction of the grade.

Include the following sections:

  1. Introduction
  2. Language Tutorial
  3. Language Manual
  4. Project Plan
  5. Architectural Design
  6. Test Plan
  7. Lessons Learned
  8. Appendix

Project Resources

pdf A Two-page Introduction to ANTLR
pdf tar.gz file An ANTLR implementation of the little language from Appendix A of the second edition of the Dragon Book.
directory An ANTLR example illustrating how to display ASTs. Run SimpLexer.g through ANTLR, compile the generated .java files along with Main.java and run "java Main < test.txt" to both print the AST in a human-readable way and display it in a window.
ANTLR home The ANTLR homepage
pdf A two-page introduction to the CVS version control system. I strongly suggest you keep your project under some version control system.
pdf A sample final report by Chris Conway, Cheng-Hong Li, and Megan Pengelly. It includes the white paper, tutorial, language reference manual, project plan, architectural design, and testing plan. It does not include the lessons learned and code listings sections, although it should.
.zip Source for the very successful MX language project from Spring 2003.
class homepage The class homepage for Fall 2006.
class homepage Projects from Fall 2005.
class homepage Projects from Fall 2004.
project home Projects from Spring 2003
project home Projects from Fall 2003

Proposals

pdf The Java white paper from Sun Microsystems
webpage C# Introduction and Overview

Language Reference Manuals

pdf Dennis M. Ritchie, C Reference Manual
pdf Kernighan & Ritchie, The C Programming Language
pdf The C Language Reference Manual (DEC)
pdf The C Language Reference Manual (SGI)
pdf The C Language Reference Manual (Microsoft)
pdf Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language
pdf The Java Language Specification
pdf The C# Language Specification
home Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, The AWK Programming Language

This Term's Projects

FunkGL: 3D Graphics Manipulation Language (TY)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
John Gallagher    Yezhen Lu    Oren Sivan    Christos Savvopoulos   
UNIGA: Uniform General Algorithmic Financial Trading Langauge (NS)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF filePresentation   
Leon Wu    Jiahua Ni    Jian Pan    Yang Sha    Yu Song   
SLAWscript: Python-like scripting language for GUIs (SE)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Steven Henderson    Levi Lister    Abraham Skolnik    Wei Teng   
SAMPL: Signal Analysis and Music Processing Language (NS)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Michael Haskel    Morgan Rhodes    Michael Glass    Nav Jagatpal   
Windshield: Windows Shell Script (TY)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Wei-Yun Ma    Tony Wang    Tzu-Jung Liu   
SPML: Simple PDF Manipulation Language (AI)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    Powerpoint filePresentation   
Jayesh Kataria    Dhivya Khrishnan    Stefano Pacifico    Hye Seon Yi   
EZGraphs: Graphs and Chart Generation Language (SE)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    Powerpoint filePresentation   
Edlira Kumbarce    Vincent Dobrev   
STL: Stock Trading Language (NS)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    Powerpoint filePresentation   
Rui Hu    Tom Lippincott    Rekha Duthulur    Matt (Yu-Ming) Chang    Nikhil Jhawar   
SIGL: Simple Image Generation Language (AI)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF filePresentation   
Phong Pham    Abelardo Gutierrez    Alketa Aliaj   
LL: Learning Language (TY)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Stephen Robinson    Joseanibal Colon-Ramos    George Liao    Huabiao Xu   
ASL: Animation Scriping Language (SE)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM   
Andrew Wilson    Nathan Liu   
ScriptEdit: Macro Language (TY)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Bethany Saule    Bhavesh Patira    Deni Pejanovic    Marc Vinyes   
AASL: Analog Additive Synthesis Language (NS)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF filePresentation   
Vaishnav Janardhan    Robert Katz    Carlos Rene Perez    Albert Tsai   
iml: Image Manipulation Language (AI)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF filePresentation   
Steven Chaitoff    Zachary van Schouwen    Cindy Liao    Eric Hu   
DDRL: Dynamic Data Representation Language (AI)
PDF fileProposal    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Alexandre Ling Lee    Yan Zhang    Yitao Wang    Zhiyang Cao    KyungHwan Kim   

Grading

40 % Project
20 % Midterm
30 % Final
10 % Homework

Collaboration

You will collaborate with your own small group on the programming project, but you may not collaborate with others on homeworks. Groups may share ideas about the programming assignments, but not code. Any two groups found submitting similar code will receive zero credit for the whole assignment, and repeat offenses will be referred to the dean. See the Columbia CS department academic policies for more details.

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