1

Lexical Analysis and

Lexical Analyzer Generators
Chapter 3

COP5621 Compiler Construction

Copyright Robert van Engelen, Florida State University, 2007-2009
 2

The Reason Why Lexical

Analysis is a Separate Phase
• Simplifies the design of the compiler
– LL(1) or LR(1) parsing with 1 token lookahead would
not be possible (multiple characters/tokens to match)
• Provides efficient implementation
– Systematic techniques to implement lexical analyzers
by hand or automatically from specifications
– Stream buffering methods to scan input
• Improves portability
– Non-standard symbols and alternate character
encodings can be normalized (e.g. trigraphs)
 3

Interaction of the Lexical

Analyzer with the Parser
Token,
Source Lexical tokenval
Program Parser
Analyzer
Get next
token
error error

Symbol Table
 4

Attributes of Tokens

y := 31 + 28*x Lexical analyzer

<id, “y”> <assign, > <num, 31> <+, > <num, 28> <*, > <id, “x”>

token
tokenval
(token attribute) Parser
 5

Tokens, Patterns, and Lexemes

• A token is a classification of lexical units
– For example: id and num
• Lexemes are the specific character strings that
make up a token
– For example: abc and 123
• Patterns are rules describing the set of lexemes
belonging to a token
– For example: “letter followed by letters and digits” and
“non-empty sequence of digits”
 6

Specification of Patterns for

Tokens: Definitions
• An alphabet  is a finite set of symbols
(characters)
• A string s is a finite sequence of symbols
from 
 s denotes the length of string s
  denotes the empty string, thus  = 0
• A language is a specific set of strings over
some fixed alphabet 
 7

Specification of Patterns for

Tokens: String Operations
• The concatenation of two strings x and y is
denoted by xy
• The exponentation of a string s is defined by

s0 = 
si = si-1s for i > 0

note that s = s = s
 8

Specification of Patterns for

Tokens: Language Operations
• Union
L  M = {s  s  L or s  M}
• Concatenation
LM = {xy  x  L and y  M}
• Exponentiation
L0 = {}; Li = Li-1L
• Kleene closure
L* = i=0,…, Li
• Positive closure
L+ = i=1,…, Li
 9

Specification of Patterns for

Tokens: Regular Expressions
• Basis symbols:
  is a regular expression denoting language {}
– a   is a regular expression denoting {a}
• If r and s are regular expressions denoting languages L(r)
and M(s) respectively, then
– rs is a regular expression denoting L(r)  M(s)
– rs is a regular expression denoting L(r)M(s)
– r* is a regular expression denoting L(r)*
– (r) is a regular expression denoting L(r)
• A language defined by a regular expression is called a
regular set
 10

Specification of Patterns for

Tokens: Regular Definitions
• Regular definitions introduce a naming convention:
d1  r1
d2  r2
…
dn  rn
where each ri is a regular expression over
  {d1, d2, …, di-1 }
• Any dj in ri can be textually substituted in ri to
obtain an equivalent set of definitions
 11

Specification of Patterns for

Tokens: Regular Definitions
• Example:

letter  AB…Zab…z
digit  01…9
id  letter ( letterdigit )*

• Regular definitions are not recursive:

digits  digit digitsdigit wrong!

 12

Specification of Patterns for

Tokens: Notational Shorthand
• The following shorthands are often used:

r+ = rr*
r? = r
[a-z] = abc…z

• Examples:
digit  [0-9]
num  digit+ (. digit+)? ( E (+-)? digit+ )?
 13

Regular Definitions and

Grammars
Grammar
stmt  if expr then stmt
 if expr then stmt else stmt

expr  term relop term
 term Regular definitions
term  id if  if
 num then  then
else  else
relop  <  <=  <>  >  >=  =
id  letter ( letter | digit )*
num  digit+ (. digit+)? ( E (+-)? digit+ )?
 14

Coding Regular Definitions in

Transition Diagrams
relop  <<=<>>>==
start < =
0 1 2 return(relop, LE)
>
3 return(relop, NE)
other
4 * return(relop, LT)
=
5 return(relop, EQ)
> =
6 7 return(relop, GE)
other
8 * return(relop, GT)
id  letter ( letterdigit )* letter or digit

start letter other

9 10 11 * return(gettoken(),
install_id())
 Coding Regular Definitions in 15

Transition Diagrams: Code

token nexttoken()
{ while (1) {
switch (state) {
case 0: c = nextchar();
if (c==blank || c==tab || c==newline) { Decides the
state = 0;
lexeme_beginning++; next start state
}
else if (c==‘<’) state = 1; to check
else if (c==‘=’) state = 5;
else if (c==‘>’) state = 6;
else state = fail();
break; int fail()
case 1: { forward = token_beginning;
… swith (start) {
case 9: c = nextchar(); case 0: start = 9; break;
if (isletter(c)) state = 10; case 9: start = 12; break;
else state = fail(); case 12: start = 20; break;
break; case 20: start = 25; break;
case 10: c = nextchar(); case 25: recover(); break;
if (isletter(c)) state = 10; default: /* error */
else if (isdigit(c)) state = 10; }
else state = 11; return start;
break; }
…
 16

The Lex and Flex Scanner

Generators
• Lex and its newer cousin flex are scanner
generators
• Systematically translate regular definitions
into C source code for efficient scanning
• Generated code is easy to integrate in C
applications
 17

Creating a Lexical Analyzer with

Lex and Flex
lex
source lex or flex lex.yy.c
program compiler
lex.l

lex.yy.c
C a.out
compiler

input sequence
stream a.out of tokens
 18

Lex Specification
• A lex specification consists of three parts:
regular definitions, C declarations in %{ %}
%%
translation rules
%%
user-defined auxiliary procedures
• The translation rules are of the form:
p1 { action1 }
p2 { action2 }
…
pn { actionn }
 19

Regular Expressions in Lex

x match the character x
\. match the character .
“string”match contents of string of characters
. match any character except newline
^ match beginning of a line
$ match the end of a line
[xyz] match one character x, y, or z (use \ to escape -)
[^xyz]match any character except x, y, and z
[a-z] match one of a to z
r* closure (match zero or more occurrences)
r+ positive closure (match one or more occurrences)
r? optional (match zero or one occurrence)
r1 r2 match r1 then r2 (concatenation)
r1|r2 match r1 or r2 (union)
(r) grouping
r1\r2 match r1 when followed by r2
{d} match the regular expression defined by d
 20

Example Lex Specification 1

Contains
%{ the matching
Translation #include <stdio.h> lexeme
%}
rules %%
[0-9]+ { printf(“%s\n”, yytext); }
.|\n { }
%% Invokes
main() the lexical
{ yylex(); analyzer
}

lex spec.l
gcc lex.yy.c -ll
./a.out < spec.l
 21

Example Lex Specification 2

%{
#include <stdio.h> Regular
int ch = 0, wd = 0, nl = 0;
definition
Translation %}
rules delim [ \t]+
%%
\n { ch++; wd++; nl++; }
^{delim} { ch+=yyleng; }
{delim} { ch+=yyleng; wd++; }
. { ch++; }
%%
main()
{ yylex();
printf("%8d%8d%8d\n", nl, wd, ch);
}
 22

Example Lex Specification 3

%{
#include <stdio.h> Regular
%}
definitions
Translation digit [0-9]
rules letter [A-Za-z]
id {letter}({letter}|{digit})*
%%
{digit}+ { printf(“number: %s\n”, yytext); }
{id} { printf(“ident: %s\n”, yytext); }
. { printf(“other: %s\n”, yytext); }
%%
main()
{ yylex();
}
 23

Example Lex Specification 4

%{ /* definitions of manifest constants */
#define LT (256)
…
%}
delim [ \t\n]
ws {delim}+
letter [A-Za-z] Return
digit [0-9]
id {letter}({letter}|{digit})* token to
number
%%
{digit}+(\.{digit}+)?(E[+\-]?{digit}+)? parser
{ws} { }
if {return IF;} Token
then
else
{return THEN;}
{return ELSE;}
attribute
{id} {yylval = install_id(); return ID;}
{number} {yylval = install_num(); return NUMBER;}
“<“ {yylval = LT; return RELOP;}
“<=“ {yylval = LE; return RELOP;}
“=“ {yylval = EQ; return RELOP;}
“<>“ {yylval = NE; return RELOP;}
“>“ {yylval = GT; return RELOP;}
“>=“
%%
{yylval = GE; return RELOP;} Install yytext as
int install_id() identifier in symbol table
…
 24

Design of a Lexical Analyzer

Generator
• Translate regular expressions to NFA
• Translate NFA to an efficient DFA

Optional

regular
NFA DFA
expressions

Simulate NFA Simulate DFA

to recognize to recognize
tokens tokens
 25

Nondeterministic Finite
Automata
• An NFA is a 5-tuple (S, , , s0, F) where

S is a finite set of states

 is a finite set of symbols, the alphabet
 is a mapping from S   to a set of states
s0  S is the start state
F  S is the set of accepting (or final) states
 26

Transition Graph
• An NFA can be diagrammatically
represented by a labeled directed graph
called a transition graph

a
S = {0,1,2,3}
start
0
a
1
b
2
b
3
 = {a,b}
s0 = 0
b F = {3}
 27

Transition Table
• The mapping  of an NFA can be
represented in a transition table

Input Input
State
(0,a) = {0,1} a b
(0,b) = {0} 0 {0, 1} {0}
(1,b) = {2} 1 {2}
(2,b) = {3} 2 {3}
 28

The Language Defined by an

NFA
• An NFA accepts an input string x if and only if
there is some path with edges labeled with
symbols from x in sequence from the start state to
some accepting state in the transition graph
• A state transition from one state to another on the
path is called a move
• The language defined by an NFA is the set of
input strings it accepts, such as (ab)*abb for the
example NFA
 29

Design of a Lexical Analyzer

Generator: RE to NFA to DFA
Lex specification with NFA
regular expressions
p1 { action1 } N(p1) action1

p2 { action2 } start
s0
 N(p2) action2
… …
pn { actionn } 
N(pn) actionn

Subset construction

DFA
 30

From Regular Expression to NFA

(Thompson’s Construction)

start
i  f

a start a
i f

start  N(r1) 
r1r2 i f
 N(r2) 
start
r1r2 i N(r1) N(r2) f


r* start
i  N(r)  f


 31

Combining the NFAs of a Set of

Regular Expressions
start a
1 2

a { action1 }
start a b b
abb { action2 } 3 4 5 6
a b
a*b+ { action3 }
start
7 b 8
a
1 2

start
0  3
a
4
b
5
b
6
a b

7 b 8
 32

Simulating the Combined NFA

Example 1
a
1 2 action1

start
0  3
a
4
b
5
b
6 action2
a b

7 b 8 action3

a a b a
none
0 2 7 8 action3
1 4
3 7 Must find the longest match:
7 Continue until no further moves are possible
When last state is accepting: execute action
 33

Simulating the Combined NFA

Example 2
a
1 2 action1

start
0  3
a
4
b
5
b
6 action2
a b

7 b 8 action3

a b b a
none
0 2 5 6 action2
1 4 8 8
action3
3 7
7 When two or more accepting states are reached, the
first action given in the Lex specification is executed
 34

Deterministic Finite Automata

• A deterministic finite automaton is a special case
of an NFA
– No state has an -transition
– For each state s and input symbol a there is at most one
edge labeled a leaving s
• Each entry in the transition table is a single state
– At most one path exists to accept a string
– Simulation algorithm is simple
 35

Example DFA

A DFA that accepts (ab)*abb

b
b
a
start a b b
0 1 2 3

a a
 36

Conversion of an NFA into a

DFA
• The subset construction algorithm converts an
NFA into a DFA using:
-closure(s) = {s}  {t  s  …  t}
-closure(T) = sT -closure(s)
move(T,a) = {t  s a t and s  T}
• The algorithm produces:
Dstates is the set of states of the new DFA
consisting of sets of states of the NFA
Dtran is the transition table of the new DFA
 37

-closure and move Examples

-closure({0}) = {0,1,3,7}
a
1 2 move({0,1,3,7},a) = {2,4,7}
 -closure({2,4,7}) = {2,4,7}
start
 a b b move({2,4,7},a) = {7}
0 3 4 5 6
a b -closure({7}) = {7}
 move({7},b) = {8}
7 b 8 -closure({8}) = {8}
move({8},a) = 
a a b a
none
0 2 7 8
1 4
3 7
7 Also used to simulate NFAs
 38

Simulating an NFA using

-closure and move
S := -closure({s0})
Sprev := 
a := nextchar()
while S   do
Sprev := S
S := -closure(move(S,a))
a := nextchar()
end do
if Sprev  F   then
execute action in Sprev
return “yes”
else return “no”
 39

The Subset Construction

Algorithm
Initially, -closure(s0) is the only state in Dstates and it is unmarked
while there is an unmarked state T in Dstates do
mark T
for each input symbol a   do
U := -closure(move(T,a))
if U is not in Dstates then
add U as an unmarked state to Dstates
end if
Dtran[T,a] := U
end do
end do
 40

Subset Construction Example 1


a
2 3

start    a b b
0 1 6 7 8 9 10

4
b
5


b
Dstates
C A = {0,1,2,4,7}
b a b B = {1,2,3,4,6,7,8}
start a b b C = {1,2,4,5,6,7}
A B D E
a D = {1,2,4,5,6,7,9}
a
a E = {1,2,4,5,6,7,10}
 41

Subset Construction Example 2

a
1 2 a1

start
0  3
a
4
b
5
b
6 a2
a b

7 b 8 a3
b

a3 Dstates
C A = {0,1,3,7}
b a
b b B = {2,4,7}
start C = {8}
A D
D = {7}
a
a
b b E = {5,8}
B E F
F = {6,8}
a1 a3 a2 a3
 42

Minimizing the Number of States

of a DFA

C
b a
b a
start a b b start a b b
A B D E A B D E
a a
a
a b a
 43

From Regular Expression to DFA

Directly
• The “important states” of an NFA are those
without an -transition, that is if
move({s},a)   for some a then s is an
important state
• The subset construction algorithm uses only
the important states when it determines
-closure(move(T,a))
 44

From Regular Expression to DFA

Directly (Algorithm)
• Augment the regular expression r with a
special end symbol # to make accepting
states important: the new expression is r#
• Construct a syntax tree for r#
• Traverse the tree to construct functions
nullable, firstpos, lastpos, and followpos
 45

From Regular Expression to DFA

Directly: Syntax Tree of (a|b)*abb#
concatenation
#
6
b
closure 5
b
4

* a
3
alternation
| position
number
a b (for leafs )
1 2
 46

From Regular Expression to DFA

Directly: Annotating the Tree
• nullable(n): the subtree at node n generates
languages including the empty string
• firstpos(n): set of positions that can match the first
symbol of a string generated by the subtree at node
n
• lastpos(n): the set of positions that can match the
last symbol of a string generated be the subtree at
node n
• followpos(i): the set of positions that can follow
position i in the tree
 47

From Regular Expression to DFA

Directly: Annotating the Tree
Node n nullable(n) firstpos(n) lastpos(n)

Leaf  true  

Leaf i false {i} {i}

| nullable(c1) firstpos(c1) lastpos(c1)

/ \ or  
c1 c2 nullable(c2) firstpos(c2) lastpos(c2)
if nullable(c1) then if nullable(c2) then
• nullable(c1)
firstpos(c1)  lastpos(c1) 
/ \ and
firstpos(c2) lastpos(c2)
c1 c2 nullable(c2)
else firstpos(c1) else lastpos(c2)
*
| true firstpos(c1) lastpos(c1)
c1
 48

From Regular Expression to DFA

Directly: Syntax Tree of (a|b)*abb#
{1, 2, 3} {6}

{1, 2, 3} {5} {6} # {6}

6
{1, 2, 3} {4} {5} b {5}
nullable 5
{1, 2, 3} {3} {4} b {4}
4

{3} a {3}
firstpos lastpos
{1, 2} {1, 2}
* 3

{1, 2} | {1, 2}

{1} a {1} {2} b {2}

1 2
 49

From Regular Expression to DFA

Directly: followpos
for each node n in the tree do
if n is a cat-node with left child c1 and right child c2 then
for each i in lastpos(c1) do
followpos(i) := followpos(i)  firstpos(c2)
end do
else if n is a star-node
for each i in lastpos(n) do
followpos(i) := followpos(i)  firstpos(n)
end do
end if
end do
 From Regular Expression to DFA
50

Directly: Algorithm
s0 := firstpos(root) where root is the root of the syntax tree
Dstates := {s0} and is unmarked
while there is an unmarked state T in Dstates do
mark T
for each input symbol a   do
let U be the set of positions that are in followpos(p)
for some position p in T,
such that the symbol at position p is a
if U is not empty and not in Dstates then
add U as an unmarked state to Dstates
end if
Dtran[T,a] := U
end do
end do
 51

From Regular Expression to DFA

Directly: Example
Node followpos
1 {1, 2, 3} 1
2 {1, 2, 3} 3 4 5 6
3 {4}
2
4 {5}
5 {6}
6 -

b b
a
start a 1,2, b 1,2, b 1,2,
1,2,3
3,4 3,5 3,6
a
a
 52

Time-Space Tradeoffs

Space Time
Automaton
(worst case) (worst case)
NFA O(r) O(rx)
DFA O(2|r|) O(x)