Compilers Principles Techniques & Tools

Compilers
Principles, Techniques, & Tools

Second Edition by,

Alfred V. Aho,

Columbia University
Monica S. Lam,

Stanford University
Ravi Sethi,

Avaya
Jeffrey D. Ullman,

Stanford University

Preface

In the time since the 1986 edition of this book, the world of compiler design has changed significantly. Programming languages have evolved to present new compilation problems. Computer architectures offer a variety of resources of which the compiler designer must take advantage. Perhaps most interestingly, the venerable technology of code optimization has found use outside compilers. It is now used in tools that find bugs in software, and most importantly, find security holes in existing code. And much of the "front-end" technology — grammars, regular expressions, parsers, and syntax-directed translators — are still in wide use.

Thus, our philosophy from previous versions of the book has not changed. We recognize that few readers will build, or even maintain, a compiler for a major programming language. Yet the models, theory, and algorithms associated with a compiler can be applied to a wide range of problems in software design and software development. We therefore emphasize problems that are most commonly encountered in designing a language processor, regardless of the source language or target machine.