Systems & research
Compiler Construction
From source text to a structured program: a compiler front end written in C, covering lexing, LL(1) parsing, ASTs, symbol tables, and semantic checks.
About the project
Our team built the front end stage by stage, starting with a twin-buffer lexer and a table-driven parser. FIRST and FOLLOW sets drive the LL(1) table; the resulting parse tree is reduced to an AST and connected to scope and type information. The project includes error recovery and partial semantic analysis. Executable code generation was outside the completed implementation.
What I built
- Built a compiler front end as a team project in C, with a DFA twin-buffer lexer and a table-driven LL(1) parser using FIRST/FOLLOW sets.
- Constructed an AST and symbol tables, with scope/type checks, partial semantic analysis, and panic-mode error recovery. Executable code generation was not completed.
- Compared parse-tree and AST node storage: one sample showed roughly 70% lower estimated node-structure memory, calculated from node counts and structure sizes.