Engineering a Production Code Generator

Abstract

This paper describes the structure of a code generator formed by merging the best aspects of three code generation techniques: Graham-Glanville parser-driven code generation [G] [GG] [GR] [HG], the register allocation/spill mechanism from the Portable C Compiler [J], and a code template expander [W]. The Graham-Glanville method was modified to use a standard LALR parser and table builder, and the register allocation method was extended in several significant ways in order to make optimal use of a machine with characterized registers.