COMS W4115 Programming Languages and Translators Summer 2009 (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

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
May 20	Intro. to Languages		Ch. 1, 2
May 22	The C Language Reference Manual
May 25	"
May 27	Scripting Languages		Ch. 2
May 29	Introduction to O'Caml
June 1	"
June 3	"			Proposal
June 5	Language Processors		Ch. 2
June 8	Syntax and Parsing		Ch 3, 4
June 10	"
June 12	Getting it right			HW1
June 15	Ocamlyacc and ASTs		Ch. 4, 5
June 17	Names, Scope, and Bindings		Ch. 6	HW2
June 19	"
June 22	Small Examples		App. A	LRM
June 24	Midterm review
June 26	Midterm
June 29	Types		Ch. 6
July 1	"
July 3	Control-flow		Ch. 6
July 6	"
July 8	Code Generation		Ch. 6, 7, 8
July 10	Logic Programming
July 13	Functional Programming			HW3
July 15	Concurrency
July 29	Review for final
August 3	Final Exam
August 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.

Related 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 ML. Cambridge University Press, 1998. The opposite of Scott: focuses on compiler construction, not language design issues. It uses the functional language ML, which is closely related to O'Caml, but just different enough to be annoying.
Lawrence C. Paulson ML for the Working Programmer. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Second edition. A book about functional programming. It's written for the ML language, not O'Caml, but the two are closely related.
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.

Objective Caml Resources

	The Caml Language Homepage. Compiler downloads and documentation. Start here.
	The Objective Caml System. Documentation and User's Manual for the whole system, including documentation for ocamllex, ocamlyacc, ocamldep, ocamldebug, and all the standard libraries.
	Jason Hickey, Introduction to Objective Caml. One of my favorite books on O'Caml.
	Emmanuel Chailloux, Pascal Manoury, and Bruno Pagano, Developing Applications with Objective Caml. An online book translated from the French (O'Reilly).
	Objective CAML Tutorial
	O'Caml source for the four-function calculator.
	O'Caml source and test cases for the microc language.

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
   • 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
   • Each team member should explain his or her most important learning
   • Include any advice the team has 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 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.

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

JTemplate: Proposal    LRM    Final Report    Project Files    Abed Tony BenBrahim

AIC: All In the Cards game language Proposal    LRM    Final Report    Project Files    Andrew Willouer

SOIL: Simple Object Interaction Language Proposal    LRM    Final Report    Project Files    Richard Zieminski Jr.

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.