Course Motivation and overview

This course is intended to give the student a stronger understanding of how compilers and interpretters work, how the are developed and implemented, their relationship to the underlying hardware, and the impact all of this has on the end user - the software developer.

The lectures will be used to discuss both the underlying theory and the specific tools and techniques we will be applying, while the labs and project will be used to apply this knowledge in practical exercises and the development of a small compiler.

A more detailed list of course topics and knowledge outcomes is given in the Topics and Knowledge Outcomes sections below.

Contact information, materials

• Lecturer: Dave Wessels, David.Wessels@viu.ca
• Office hours (bldg 315, rm 222)
    - Fridays 11:30-1:30
  If you need to see me outside office hours please send me an email (David.Wessels@viu.ca) to arrange a suitable time.

Timetable

• Lectures: (building 210, room 260)
    - Mon/Wed 11:30-1pm
• Labs: (building 315, room 115)
    - Mon/Wed 3:30-5:30pm

Assessment

• 30% Quizzes
• 30% Labs
• 15% Project
• 25% Final exam

Resources

• Textbook: there is no required textbook for the course. A wide variety of online material can be found through the course website (see below).
• Web material: online material will be available through http://csci.viu.ca/~wesselsd/csci439/ and may include supplementary lecture notes and reading material, assignments, labs, sample programs, practice problems, links to external documentation and tutorials, etc.
• Software resources we will be using may include: C, C++, lex, yacc, antlr, bash, make, git, gdb, gprof

Topics
An approximate list of topics is given below, more detail and an approximate ordering can be found at csci.viu.ca/~wesselsd/courses/csci439

• a review of regular expressions, context free grammars and parsing
• lexical analysis (tokenization, lex)
• syntactic analysis (parsing, yacc)
• semantic analysis and augmented grammars
• intermediate representations of code (abstract syntax trees)
• optimization techniques using abstract syntax trees
• machine code generation and optimization
• register allocation and instruction scheduling
• translation between high-level languages using abstract syntax trees
• interpretters and interpretted languages

Knowledge Outcomes
On successful completion of the course, the student should be able to:

• design regular expressions and use tools such as lex to tokenize source code
• design grammars and use tools such as yacc to parse source code
• write lex/yacc code to compile or translate high level source code to machine code or another high level language
• write lex/yacc code to debug or interpret high level source code

• regular expressions and lexical analysis of code
• context free grammars and syntactic analysis of code
• augmented grammars and semantic analysis of code
• the relationship between high level constructs and machine code
• the implications of different choices in the grammars used to define a language (and to implement tools analyzing the language)
• the implications of different choices in the intermediate and final representations of a language in the compilaton process
• how to effectively use high level language constructs in a manner consistent with the compiled-end result

Computer accounts
To work on your quizzes and experiment with the tools and languages discussed during the semester, you will be given accounts for the computer labs. There is a user id and password associated with each account. Each student is responsible for their account, and for following both the departmental and university-college policies. These may be found under the Lab and Computer Usage rules at scitech.viu.ca/computer-science/computing-resources

VIU's Accessibility Services
VIU's Accessibility Services office provides services to students with Learning Disabilities, mental health disabilities, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism, chronic medical conditions, and impairments in mobility, hearing, and vision.

Appeals of Grades:
Any exercise or examination grade may be appealed. However, the appeal must be made to the instructor, in writing and attached to the work in question, and within 7 days of the grade being made available to the class. The instructor reserves the right to re-grade the entire piece of work submitted on appeal, not necessarily just the component that the student believes is in error.

Grade Conversion:

The standard VIU grading scale will be in use.

90-100	85-<90	80-<85	76-<80	72-<76	68-<72	64-<68	60-<64	55-<60	50-<55	<50
A+	A	A-	B+	B	B-	C+	C	C-	D	F

Student Academic Code of Conduct (VIU policy 96.01)
All VIU students are required to familiarize themselves with, and adhere to, the Student Academic Code of Conduct.