Stephen A. Edwards Columbia University Crown
  COMS W4115
Programming Languages and Translators
Fall 2006

General Information

Class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM in 1127 Mudd.

Staff

Name Email Office hours Location
Prof. Stephen A. Edwards sedwards@cs.columbia.edu T 3-4, W 4-5 462 CSB
Jia Zeng jia@cs.columbia.edu F 2-4 472 CSB
Ty Yano ty2142@columbia.edu M 4-5, Th 6:30-7:30 TA Room, 1st floor Mudd
Deepti Gupta dag2132@columbia.edu T 3:30-5:30 TA Room, 1st floor Mudd

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

Java fluency: You will be writing a large Java program and must know the language well.

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
September 5 Intro. to Languages pdf pdf Ch. 1, 2
September 7 Language Design pdf pdf
September 12 Language Processors pdf pdf Ch. 2
September 14 Scripting Languages pdf pdf Ch. 2
September 19 Al Aho on Awk notes
September 21 Syntax and Parsing pdf pdf Ch 3, 4
September 26 " White Paper
September 28 Getting it right pdf pdf
October 3 ANTLR pdf pdf Ch. 4
October 5 ASTs pdf pdf Ch. 4, 5
October 10 Small Examples pdf pdf App. A HW1 pdf
October 12 Names, Scope, and Bindings pdf pdf Ch. 6
October 17 Control-flow pdf pdf Ch. 6
October 19 " LRM
October 24 Midterm review pdf pdf
October 26 Midterm
October 31 Types pdf pdf Ch. 6
November 2 "
November 7 Election Day
November 9 Code Generation pdf pdf Ch. 6, 7, 8
November 14 Functional Programming pdf pdf
November 16 "
November 21
November 23 Thanksgiving Holiday
November 28 Guest lecture: Microsoft's Jim Miller Where has my compiler gone? ppt
November 30 Review for final pdf pdf HW2 pdf
December 5 Logic Programming pdf pdf
December 7 Final Exam
December 19 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.

Cover of the Dragon Book 2nd edition

Optional 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.

Cover of Programming Language Pragmatics 2nd edition

Andrew W. Appel.
Modern Compiler Implementation in Java.
Cambridge University Press, 1998.

The opposite of Scott: focuses on compiler construction, not language design issues.

Cover of Appel

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.

Cover of Muchnick

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
  2. Language Tutorial
  3. Language Manual
  4. Project Plan
  5. Architectural Design
  6. Test Plan
  7. Lessons Learned
  8. Appendix

Project Resources

pdf A Two-page Introduction to ANTLR
pdf tar.gz file An ANTLR implementation of the little language from Appendix A of the second edition of the Dragon Book.
directory An ANTLR example illustrating how to display ASTs. Run SimpLexer.g through ANTLR, compile the generated .java files along with Main.java and run "java Main < test.txt" to both print the AST in a human-readable way and display it in a window.
ANTLR home The ANTLR homepage
pdf A two-page introduction to the CVS version control system. I strongly suggest you keep your project under some version control system.
pdf 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.
.zip Source for the very successful MX language project from Spring 2003.
project home Other projects from Spring 2003
project home Other projects from Fall 2003

White Papers

pdf The Java white paper from Sun Microsystems
webpage C# Introduction and Overview

Language Reference Manuals

pdf Dennis M. Ritchie, C Reference Manual
pdf Kernighan & Ritchie, The C Programming Language
pdf The C Language Reference Manual (DEC)
pdf The C Language Reference Manual (SGI)
pdf The C Language Reference Manual (Microsoft)
pdf Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language
pdf The Java Language Specification
pdf The C# Language Specification
home Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger, The AWK Programming Language

This Term's Projects

zx81basic: A version of BASIC for the ZX81 (JZ)
PDF fileFinal Report   
Carlos Alustiza   
ACL: Automated Command Line (SE)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Cheow Goh   
aTCl: Automatic Text Categorization/Classification Language (TY)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Jawwad Sultan   
bggl: Board Game Generator Language (DG)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF fileSlides   
Matthew Chu    Steven Moncada    Hrishikesh Tapaswi    Vitaliy Shchupak   
Bright: A Secure Internet Programming Language (JZ)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM   
Lemuel Fan   
DSPL: Digital Signal Processing Language (SE)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    Compressed Tar ArchiveProject Files   
David Lariviere    Jeffrey Cropsey    Michael Lynch    Varun Maithel    Varun Mehta   
EasyQL: Database manipulation language (DG)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF fileSlides   
Kangkook Jee    Kishan Iyer    Smridh Thapar    Saahil Peerbhoy   
empath: A Modeling Language for Living Beings (JZ)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF fileSlides   
Jeremy Posner    Nalini Kartha    Sampada Sonalkar    William Mee   
gal: A rapid prototyping language for graph algorithms (TY)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Albert Winters    Shepard Saltzman    Athar Abdul-Quader    Oren Benjamin Yeshua   
GECL: Google Earth Customization Language (JZ)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    Compressed Tar ArchiveProject Files   
Carlos Icaza-Estrada    Wei-Chung Hsu    Tz-Yang Tang    Bhashinee Garg   
G!: A programming language for 2D games (TY)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF fileSlides   
Divya Arora    Steve Lianoglou    Rachit Parikh    Amortya Ray   
gpa: General Purpose to Assembly Language (SE)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Michael Pierorazio    Juan Gutierrez    Vincenzo Zarrillo    Dmitry Gimzelberg   
ipl: Image Processing Language (DG)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF fileSlides   
Jianning Yue    Wookyun Kho    Young Jin Yoon   
mars: CodeName: MARS (Music Mixing Language) (DG)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF fileSlides   
Michael Sorvillo    Aaron Fernandes    Ritika Virmani    Swapneel Sheth   
Mirage: A Graphical and Parallel Sketching Language (SE)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Abhilash Itharaju    Ming Liao    Nalini Vasudevan    Peili Zhang   
rll: Reinforcement Learning Language (SE)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Michael Groble   
R: A Scripting language for a call routing engine (TY)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Rajiv Kumar   
SGDL: School Geometry Description Language (TY)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report   
Sanjay Kumar   
simplex: Syntax for International Monetary, Property, and Liquidity Exchange (SE)
PDF fileWhitepaper    PDF fileLRM    PDF fileFinal Report    PDF fileSlides   
Steven Chen    Gilbert Hom    Kelvin Jiang    Eric Zhang   

Grading

40 % Project
20 % Midterm
30 % Final
10 % Homework

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.

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