Delegating Compiler Objects: An Object-Oriented Approach to Crafting Compilers

Abstract

Conventional compilers often are large entities that are highly complex, difficult to maintain and hard to reuse. In this article it is argued that this is due to the inherently functional approach to compiler construction. An alternative approach to compiler construction is proposed, based on object-oriented principles, which solves (or at least lessens) the problems of compiler construction. The approach is based on delegating compiler objects ( Dco s) that provide a structural decomposition of compilers in addition to the conventional functional decomposition. The DCO approach makes use of the parser delegation and lexer delegation techniques, that provide reuse and modularisation of syntactical, respectively, lexical specifications. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.