While compilers for high-level programming languages are large complex software systems, they have particular characteristics that differentiate them from other software systems. Their functionality is almost completely well-defined – ideally there exist complete precise descriptions of the source and target languages. Additional descriptions of the interfaces to the operating system, programming system and programming environment, and to other compilers and libraries are often available.

The book deals with the optimization phase of compilers. In this phase, programs are transformed in order to increase their efficiency. To preserve the semantics of the programs in these transformations, the compiler has to meet the associated applicability conditions. These are checked using static analysis of the programs. In this book the authors systematically describe the analysis and transformation of imperative and functional programs. In addition to a detailed description of important efficiency-improving transformations, the book offers a concise introduction to the necessary concepts and methods, namely to operational semantics, lattices, and fixed-point algorithms.

This book is intended for students of computer science. The book is supported throughout with examples, exercises and program fragments.

Author Biography

The authors are among the established experts on compiler construction, with decades of related teaching experience. Prof. Dr. Reinhard Wilhelm is the head of the Compiler Design Lab of the Universität des Saarlandes, and his main research interests include compiler construction; Prof. Dr. Helmut Seidl heads the Institut für Informatik of the Technische Universität München, and his main research interests include automatic program analysis and the design and implementation of programming languages; Dr. Sebastian Hack is a Junior Professor in the Computer Science Programming Group of the Universität des Saarlandes, and his main research areas include compilers and code generation.

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