Official URL: http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/course/DAT151-lp2/

Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/plt-2015-lp2 (please provide your full name and date of birth when requesting membership!)

Studieportal: https://www.student.chalmers.se/sp/course?course_id=23453

GU course description: http://kursplaner.gu.se/english/DIT231.pdf

Last year course page: http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/year/2015/course/DAT151/

Tentative Schedule

All lectures are in HC2, starting at 13:15.

Material: plt = course book, dragon = Dragon book. Slides follow closely the plt book.

The official course schema is in Time Edit.

Description

The aim of the course is to give understanding of how programming languages are designed, documented, and implemented. The course covers the basic techniques and tools needed to write interpreters, and gives a summary introduction to compilation as well. Those who have passed the course should be able to

1. define the lexical structure of programming languages by using regular expressions, explain the functioning of finite automata, and implement lexical analysers by using standard tools;
2. define the syntax of programming languages by using context-free grammars, explain the principles of LL and LR parsing, and implement parsers by using standard tools;
3. define and implement abstract syntax;
4. master the technique of syntax-directed translation and its efficient implementation in their chosen programming language;
5. formulate typing rules and implement type checkers;
6. formulate operational semantic rules and implement interpreters;
7. write simple code generators;
8. be familiar with the basic implementation issues of both imperative and functional languages;
9. design and implement special-purpose programming languages.
10. master the principles of polymorphic type checking by unification
11. implement an interpreter for a functional language

Teachers

Andreas Abel, course examiner.

Fredrik Lindblad, contact and lectures.

John Camilleri, Daniel Hausknecht, Inari Listenmaa, assistants.

The fastest way to get an answer is to mail the course's Google group http://groups.google.com/group/plt-2015-lp2. Please provide your full name and date of birth when requesting membership! Otherwise your request will be bounced back or ignored.

Google Group

If you have any general questions regarding the course, the labs or the exercises, please ask them in our Google group http://groups.google.com/group/plt-2015-lp2. This will reach all teachers and fellow students. If you are not yet member of the group, you have to

• get a google account (if you don't have it yet)
• go to http://groups.google.com/group/plt-2015-lp2.
• request an invitation to the plt-2015-lp2 group.

You will have to give your real name and your person number (or date of birth) when you register, otherwise your membership is not approved. This is necessary to identify you as a participant of the course.

Laboration times and supervision

Times:

• Tuesday 15:15-17, in ED3354.
• Thursday 15:15-17, in ED3354.
• Friday 13:15-15, in ED3354.

Attendance in these classes is optional. Normally, each student should attend at most one supervised laboration time each week. Since attendance is not compulsory, there may be room for more times. But, if there is lack of room, those who attend their first supervision of the week have priority to get a place and supervisor help.

Laborations

There will be four laborations, written individually or in pairs.

• Lab 1 - parser (deadline 16/11)
• Lab 2 - type checker and interpreter (deadline 30/11)
• Lab 3 - code generator (deadline 14/12)
• Lab 4 - functional language interpreter (deadline 11/01 2016)

Reporting is done via Fire. Before reporting, you must run your program through a test suite.

We guarantee two gradings per lab: one for the version submitted before the ordinary deadline for that lab, the other for a resubmission before the final deadline. If your first submission is after the lab deadline, only one grading is guaranteed.

If you didn't pass the labs by the end of the course you will have another opportunity in connection with the re-exam in April. The deadline will be Friday, April 8. If you intend to re-submit labs then, please contact the course responsible via email on March 31 at the latest. If you need help you should also contact the course responsible, not the teaching assistants. Note however that you can only expect limited support. If you need a substantial amount of help, it's probably better to wait until next time the course is given.

Literature

The main book will be one that developed from earlier editions of this course:

• Ranta: Implementing Programming Languages. An Introduction to Compilers and Interpreters, College Publications, London, 2012. Web page (with extra material and links to selling sites): http://www.digitalgrammars.com/ipl-book/

If you are really interested in the topic, for instance, if you want to continue with the Compiler Construction course, you should also consider the Dragon book,

• Aho, Lam, Sethi & Ullman: Compilers Principles, Techniques & Tools Second edition, Pearson/Addison Wesley 2007.

Both books are available at web bookshops. The main book will also be sold at Cremona.

Exam

Written exam, usual grading scales.

Exam dates: 15 Jan 2016 em H, 06 Apr 2016 fm J, 17 Aug 2016 em J

The exam has the same structure as these old exams.

Further, here are some exercises and solutions to prepare for the exam.

Software

BNF Converter, http://bnfc.digitalgrammars.com/

If using the Java backend, you will need the Cup and JLex libraries. You can download pre-compiled versions here. Make sure they are placed in your classpath, for example by extracting to ~/javatools/ adding the following to .bashrc:

    export CLASSPATH=.:~/javatools/:~/javatools/Cup/:${CLASSPATH}