NDLI: The design of a space efficient compiler (MINI, Vol. 4, Issue. 4)

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Volume 4, Issue 4, August 1978

Minicomputers, main frames, and distributed systems (Keynote Address)

The future of small systems (Distinguished Panel)

Performance evaluation of three microcomputer based systems in a small business dataprocessing environment.

Comparative performance of COBOL programs on mini vs. large computer systems

The language problem for small systems (Panel Session)

The conticomputer system a commodities database

Using a preprocessor to implement a data manipulation language for a minicomputer data base system

Software reliability and validation (Panel Session)

The subsystem approach to enhancing small processor operating systems

Visual interactive production language systems

The design of a space efficient compiler

Small systems performance in business (Panel Session)

Basic for realtime control applications

Decision tables - an effective programming tool

Structured design benefits to a process control software project

Data base systems for small systems (Panel Session)

A comparative study of environments for database system implementation

Data management in Electronic Funds Transfer Systems

The concept of attached processing and attached resource computer systems (Paper Session)

A mini-micro computer link promotes distributed processing in scientific and engineering computations

Volume 4, Issue 3, June 1978

Volume 4, Issue 2, April 1978

Volume 4, Issue 1, February 1978

The design of a space efficient compiler (MINI, Vol. 4, Issue. 4)

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Donegan, Michael K.
Abstract	Writing a compiler for a small machine with minimal software support can be quite difficult because the program is long and debugging aids are usually inadequate. In addition, the usual techniques for compiler writing tend to produce programs which are quite large when compared to, for example, a BASIC interpreter. This frustrates efforts for producing compilers on small machines. We describe a method which can be used to reduce the size of a compiler and simultaneously provide good debugging tools. The resulting compiler sacrifices little in terms of execution speed (in part because compilers on minicomputers are often I/O bound). We have used this method to write an MPL [1] compiler for a Microdata 32/S minicomputer. The compiler requires approximately 12K bytes of memory as opposed to 32K bytes required by the compiler produced by the manufacturer, and compiles at essentially the same speed. Appendix II outlines the syntax of the MPL language and is included to illustrate the size of the language being compiled. MPL is based on PL/I and is quite similar to the PL/M* [2] language developed by the INTEL Corporation. The method described here uses an interpretive language for writing the compiler. Thus the interpreter is the only machine language program written. We coded the interpreter in MPL and used a cross compiler to compile it, however, the interpreter could have been easily coded in assembly language. Figure 1 illustrates the savings of the interpretive language over machine code. The procedure IF_STAT is typical of a routine which might appear in a recursive descent compiler for MPL. The gain in space occurs because machine language instructions carry too much information content when applied to a special purpose (such as compiling). Note for example that a subroutine call for the Microdata requires 6 bytes, but all that is really needed is an opcode to indicate a call and a byte to indicate which of a few subroutines is to be called.
Starting Page	62
Ending Page	70
Page Count	9
File Format	PDF
ISSN	0163576X
DOI	10.1145/1014031.806634
Journal	ACM SIGMINI Newsletter (MINI)
Volume Number	4
Issue Number	4
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	1978-02-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

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