Design Principles of Programming Languages

Slot-H
 Topics to be covered
• Evolution of Programming Languages
• Compilation and Interpretation
• Bootstrapping
• Data types and their implementation – Primitive and Composite
• Heap storage and heap storage management
• Garbage collection techniques
• Names - Binding, Lifetime, Scope
• Control Flow - Expression Evaluation, Assignment, Conditional,
Loop statements
• Function calls and their implementation
• Non-local variable access
• Exceptions and Exception Handling
• Modular Programming
• Object Oriented Programming and its implementation details
 Books
Programming Language Pragmatics - By Michael
Scott, Elsevier -Third Edition

Programming Languages Design and

Implementation by T. W. Prat, Pearson- Fourth
Edition
 Introduction
Why are there so many programming languages?
Evolution
We've learned better ways of doing things over time
Special purposes
– Languages were designed for a specific problem
domain
- Icon and Awk are good for manipulating
character strings
- C is good for low-level systems programming.
- Prolog is good for reasoning about logical
relationships among data.
 Personal Preference
–Different people like different things.
–C -some people love the briefness of C; some do
not like it.
–Some people think recursively; others prefer
iteration.
–Some people like to work with pointers; others
do not like java.
No one is standard and universally acceptable
programming language.
 What makes a language successful?

•Expressive Power
•All languages are equally powerful in technical sense (i.e. Turing complete)
•Language features have a huge impact on the programmer's ability to read, write, maintain, and
analyze programs
•Abstraction facilities enhance expressive power
•Ease of Use for Novice
•Low learning curve and often interpreted, eg. C, Java and python
•Ease of Implementation
•Runs on virtually everything, e.g. Basic Pascal and Java
, ,

•Excellent Compilers
•Fortran has extremely good compilers (because it lacks recursion and pointers) and is therefore
popular for numerical applications
•Economics
• Powerful sponsor: Cobol, Ada : U.S Department of defence.
•Some languages remain widely used long after "better" alternatives because of a huge base of
installed software and programmer experience .
Why study programming languages?
• Improve your ability to develop effective
algorithm.
• Improving ease of existing programming
language.
• Increase vocabulary of useful programming
construct.
• Better choice of Programming language.
• Easier to learn new language.
• Easier to design new language.
 Language types/Programming Paradigms

• Imperative languages, particularly the von Neumann

languages, predominate

• The focus is on how the computer should do the

things - more detailed

• In declarative languages, the focus is on what the

computer is to do -abstracted.
 Language Types

• Group languages as
– imperative
• object-oriented (Smalltalk, Eiffel, C++)
• scripting languages (Perl, JavaScript, PHP)
– declarative
• functional (Scheme, ML, pure Lisp, FP)
• logic, constraint-based (Prolog, VisiCalc, RPG)
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Compilation vs. interpretation

• Pure Compilation
– The compiler translates the high-level
source program into an equivalent target
program (typically in machine language),
and then goes away: Ex. gcc/g++
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Pure Interpretation
– Interpreter stays around for the execution
of the program
– Interpreter is the locus of control during
execution
– Ex. Bourne Again SHell (BASH), python,
perl
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Interpretation:
– Greater flexibility
– Better diagnostics (error messages)

• Compilation
– Better performance
– Everything done before run time
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Note that compilation does NOT have to produce

machine language for some sort of hardware.

• Compilation is translation from one language into

another, with full analysis of the meaning of the input.
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Common case is compilation or simple

pre-processing, followed by interpretation
• Most language implementations include a
mixture of both compilation and interpretation
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Implementation strategies:
1. Preprocessor
• Removes comments and white space
• Groups characters into tokens (keywords,
identifiers, numbers, symbols)
• Expands abbreviations in the style of a macro
assembler
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Implementation strategies:
– The C Preprocessor (conditional compilation)
• Preprocessor deletes portions of code, which
allows several versions of a program to be built
from the same source
 Compilation vs. Interpretation
• The source code is read from the file and given to the
preprocessor where it is translated into a modified
source code file which is then given to the compiler for
translation to machine language.
• The transformations performed by the preprocessor
are directed by lines in the original source file called
compiler directives.
• All such lines begin with the # character as the first
non-white space character on the line and are of one
of three types of directives:
• Macro definitions
• File inclusion
• Conditional compilation
 Compilation vs. Interpretation
• Macro- Syntax: #define
• This macro defines constant value and can be any
of the basic data types.
• Header file inclusion- Syntax: #include <file_name>
• The source code of the file “file_name” is included
in the main program at the specified place.
• Conditional compilation-
• Syntax: #ifdef, #endif, #if, #else, #ifndef
• Set of commands are included or excluded in
source program before compilation with respect to
the condition.
• Other directives -Syntax: #undef
• #undef is used to undefine a defined macro variable.
 Compilation vs. Interpretation
//Demonstration of C preprocessor capabilities

//include directive, macros and #undef x

conditional compilation #define x 20
#include<stdio.h> d = d + x;
#define x 10 #ifdef DEBUG
//#define DEBUG 1
printf("debug:c = %d, d= %d\n", c, d);
int a, b, c, d;
#endif
main()
printf("The sum is %d \n ", d);
{
printf("Welcome to DPPL sessions\n"); }
printf("Enter any two numbers \n");
scanf("%d%d",&a, &b);
c = a + b;
c = c + x;
printf("The sum of two numbers is %d \n ", c);
 Compilation vs. Interpretation
//Demonstration of C preprocessor capabilities

//include directive, macros and #undef x

conditional compilation #define x 20
#include<stdio.h> d = d + x;
#define x 10 #ifdef DEBUG
#define DEBUG 1
printf("debug:c = %d, d= %d\n", c, d);
int a, b, c, d;
#endif
main()
printf("The sum is %d \n ", d);
{
printf("Welcome to DPPL sessions\n"); }
printf("Enter any two numbers \n");
scanf("%d%d",&a, &b);
c = a + b;
c = c + x;
printf("The sum of two numbers is %d \n ", c);
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Implementation strategies:
1.Post-compilation Assembly
• Facilitates debugging (assembly language
easier for people)
• Isolates the compiler from changes in the
format of machine language files (only
assembler must be changed, is shared by many
compilers)
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Implementation strategies:
.Library of Routines and Linking
• Compiler uses a linker program to merge the
appropriate library of subroutines (e.g., math
functions such as sin, cos, log, etc.) into the final
program:
 Compilation vs. Interpretation

• Implementation strategies:
-Source-to-Source Translation (C++)
• C++ implementations based on the early AT&T
compiler generated an intermediate program in
C, instead of an assembly language:

• Compilation entails semantic understanding of what is

being processed; pre-processing does not.
• A pre-processor will often let errors through.
 Compilation vs. Interpretation
• Implementation strategies:
.-Dynamic and Just-in-Time Compilation
• In some cases a programming system may
deliberately delay compilation until the last
possible moment.
– The Java language definition defines a
machine-independent intermediate form known as byte
code. Byte code is the standard format for distribution
of Java programs.

– The main C# compiler produces .NET Common

Intermediate Language (CIL), which is then translated
into machine code immediately prior to execution.
Just-in-Time Compilation Example
 References

• Programming Language Pragmatics - By

Michael Scott Elsevier -Third Edition