An algorithmic interface structure for pascal compilers

Abstract

We implemented the first version of the interface-compiler for PASCAL. The main problems we are faced with the following.

a) Efficiency: The increased number of procedure calls (e.g. a number of code generation routines had to be created) demands greater efforts during the run time of the compiler.

An inline code substitution for procedure calls should be applied to avoid an additional overhead.

b) The complexity of PASCAL (compared with CDL 2) leads to a corresponding complexity of the interface between the code generator and the translator. To mange this, all exchanged routines have to be specified in a reasonable way.

There is a very urgent need of the specification both of the code generator and the translator: In implementing a new code generator, the implementor has to know the effect of the code generation routines to be inplemented and the effect of the translator routines to be used in this implementation.

The specification problem is rather complicated because we have to abstract from the details of all target codes in question.

Altogether, the interface-compiler seems to be the basis of compilers for PASCAL-like languages with a higher degree of portability and with a problem-directed compiler structure.

For a closer information on this project, see /Bothe 85/.