Summary of Crafting a Compiler, Second Edition, Chapter 9

Semantic Analysis: Simple Declarations and Expressions

• ps (16 Dec 98)
• Chapter outline:
  1. Declaration Processing Fundamentals
     1. Attributes in the Symbol Table
     2. Type Descriptor Structures
     3. Type Checking Using an Abstract Syntax Tree
  2. Semantic Processing of Simple Declarations
     1. Simple Variable Declarations
     2. Type Definitions, Declarations and References
     3. Variable Declarations Revisited
     4. Enumeration Types
  3. Semantic Processing for Simple Names and Expressions: An Introduction to Type Checking
     1. Handling Simple Identifiers and and Literal Constants
     2. Processing Expressions
• Notes:
  • In contrast to the simplar chapter from the previous edition, this chapter now assumes that the program being compiled is represented by an abstract syntax tree. Declaration processing and type checking are described as tree traversals.
  • As in the previous edition, simple, effective error handling techniques are included as part of this chapter.
  • Type checking of simple names and expressions is presented in the context of compiling an assigmnent.