COMS W4115 Programming Languages and Translators Spring 2008 (CVN)

Staff

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 22	Intro. to Languages		Ch. 1, 2
January 24	Language Design
January 29	Language Processors		Ch. 2
January 31	Scripting Languages		Ch. 2
February 5	Syntax and Parsing		Ch 3, 4
February 7	"
February 12	Getting it right			Proposal
February 14	ANTLR		Ch. 4
February 19	ASTs		Ch. 4, 5
February 21	Names, Scope, and Bindings		Ch. 6
February 26	"			HW1
February 28	"
March 4	Jim Miller, Where's My Compiler?
March 6	Small Examples		App. A	LRM
March 11	Midterm review
March 13	Midterm
March 17-21	Spring Break
March 25	Types		Ch. 6
March 27	"
April 1	Control-flow		Ch. 6
April 3	"
April 8	Code Generation		Ch. 6, 7, 8
April 10	Logic Programming
April 15	Functional Programming
April 17	"			HW2
April 22	Review for final
April 24	Final Exam
May 10	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.

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.
Andrew W. Appel. Modern Compiler Implementation in Java. Cambridge University Press, 1998. The opposite of Scott: focuses on compiler construction, not language design issues.
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.

The Project

The focus of 4115 is the design and implementation of a little language. 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
   • Include your language white paper.
2. Language Tutorial
   • A short explanation telling a novice how to use your language.
3. Language Manual
   • Include your language reference manual.
4. Project Plan
   • Identify process used for planning, specification, development and testing
   • Include a one-page programming style guide used by the team
   • Show your project timeline
   • Identify roles and responsibilities of each team member
   • Describe the software development environment used (tools and languages)
   • Include your project log
5. Architectural Design
   • Give block diagram showing the major components of your translator
   • Describe the interfaces between the components
   • State who implemented each component
6. Test Plan
   • Show two or three representative source language programs along with the target language program generated for each
   • Show the test suites used to test your translator
   • Explain why and how these test cases were chosen
   • What kind of automation was used in testing
   • State who did what
7. Lessons Learned
   • Explain your most important learning
   • Include any advice you have for future teams
8. Appendix
   • Attach a complete code listing of your translator with each module signed by its author
   • Do not include any ANTLR-generated files, only the .g sources.

Project Resources

	A Two-page Introduction to ANTLR. These are for ANTLR 2.x, not 3.x
	An ANTLR implementation of the little language from Appendix A of the second edition of the Dragon Book.
	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.
	The ANTLR homepage
	A two-page introduction to the CVS version control system. I strongly suggest you keep your project under some version control system.
	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.
	Source for the very successful MX language project from Spring 2003.
	Other projects from Spring 2003
	Other projects from Fall 2003

White Papers

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

Language Reference Manuals

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

This Term's Projects

SLAG: Structured Language Applied to Gaming Proposal    LRM    Edward Arnold-Berkovits

Stella: An Environment for Experimental Machine Learning Proposal    LRM    Antonio Kantek

SFAL: Simple Flash Animation Language 2.0 Proposal    LRM    Anthony Trinh

Grading

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.