Abstract Syntax Tree

Introduction

The machine independent front-end phase of a compiler constructs an intermediate representation of the source program called the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST).This is followed by a machine dependent back-end that generates a target assembly language program.

Structure

The node structure of Abstract Syntax Tree is as follows:

The union Constant is used to store the value of an integer or sting constant.

Associated Methods

struct ASTNode* TreeCreate(
struct Typetable *type,
int nodetype,
char *name,
union Constant value,
struct ASTNode *arglist,
struct ASTNode *ptr1,
struct ASTNode *ptr2,
struct ASTNode *ptr3
)
Creates a node with the fields set according to the arguments passed. The function must be responsible for doing type checking, and will be successful only if the expression tree corresponds to an ExpL statement (or ExpL expression) with no syntax or semantic errors. The function returns a pointer to the root node of the AST upon success, NULL is returned otherwise. The arguments to the function includes pointers to the subtrees of the AST node (which must have been created earlier). Other arguments include the type of the ExpL expression represented by the AST node, a node type (described below) etc.

The type field of an AST node is designed to contain a pointer to the typetable entry corresponding to the type of the expression represented by the AST node (The type is set to void for statements). The type and nodetype fields of an AST node may be assigned values according to the following convension. If an expression evaluates to NULL, its type must be set to void.

Nodetype	Type	Description
CONST	int/str	For interger and string constants. As a special case, if the constant is NULL, the type is set to void.
ID	int/str/ user-defined type	For all variable literals.
PLUS/MINUS/MUL/DIV	int	For arithmetic operators '+', '-', '*', '/', '%'. 'ptr1' and 'ptr2' must be of type int and set to the AST's of the left and the right operands respectively.
GT/LT/GE/LE	boolean	For relational operators '>', '<', '>=', '<='. 'ptr1' and 'ptr2' must be of type int and set to the AST's of the left and the right operands respectively.
EQ/NE	boolean	For relational operator '==' or '!='. 'ptr1' and 'ptr2' must be set to AST of the left and the right operands respectively and both must be of the same type.
IF	void	For the conditional construct 'if'. 'ptr1' must be set to the AST of the logical expression and must be of type 'boolean', 'ptr2' must be set to the AST of list of statements corresponding to the 'then part' and 'ptr3' must be set to the AST of list of statements corresponding to the 'else part'.
WHILE	void	For conditional construct 'while'. 'ptr1' is set to the conditional logical expression and 'ptr2' is set to AST of list of statements under the body of while construct.
READ	void	For input statement 'read', 'ptr1' must have nodetype ID or FIELD and type of 'ptr1' must be either 'int' or 'str'.
WRITE	void	For output statement 'write', 'ptr1' must be of type 'int' and 'str' and must be set to AST of the expression whose value is to be written to the standard output.
ASGN	void	For assignment statement (<var> = <expr>). 'ptr1' must be set to an AST of nodetype ID or FIELD and 'ptr2' must be set to an AST of expression whose value will be assigned to lvalue given by 'ptr1'. The types of the variable and the expression must match.
SLIST	void	To form a tree with multiple statements. The execution semantics is that the sequence of statements represented by the left subtree 'ptr1' must be evaluated before evaluating 'ptr2'.
BODY	int/str/ user-defined type	For body of a function, type indicates the return type of the function. This is created when the definition of a function is processed.
RET	int/str/ user-defined type	For return statement of a function.
FUNCTION	int/str/ user-defined type	For function calls. The type must be same as the return type of the function. The field 'arglist' must be set to list of arguments for the function.
MAIN	int	For main function.
FIELD	int/str/ user-defined type	For user-defined types,( to handle expressions of the form ID . ID, ID . ID . ID , etc).

Illustration

Consider the following program

1. Lets construct the abstract syntax tree step by step. The AST for conditional expression n==1 (in line 9) will be as follows:

2. Similarly we have AST fot n==0 (in line 9) as follows.

3. Next consider the complete conditional expression n==1 || n==0.

4.Next we will form the AST for assignment statement f = 1 (in line 10).

5. Next, lets consider the statement f = n * factorial(n-1) which consists of arthimetic expressions with operands '-','*' and an assignment statement.

AST for n-1 is as follows.

AST for n * factorial(n-1) is as follows.

AST for f = n * factorial(n-1) is as below.

6. Following is the AST for the if condition.

7. The AST for return statement is as folows

8. Finally the AST for the factorial function will be as follows.