Mike Murphy
Abstract
It is common practice in compilers to use tables to represent data, and then automatically generate code based on those tables (often known as "table-driven code"). Many compilers use machine description tables from which is automatically generated parts of the code generator, and there are often small pieces of table-driven code within a compiler. Sometimes these tables are very useful, but other times the tables themselves can become a maintenance nightmare. This paper uses examples from several SGI compilers to try and enumerate some guidelines for designing good tables and table-driven code.
- C. A. R. Hoare. "Hints on programming language design". Technical Report CS-73-403, Stanford University Computer Science Department, December 1973. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- http://open64.sourceforge.net/.Google Scholar
- David L. Parnas. "On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules". In Communications of the ACM, December 1972. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Some suggestions for the use of tables in compilers
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