compiler-frontend

Compiler Frontend

Purpose

Guide agents through building a compiler frontend: lexers (hand-written DFA vs flex), Pratt parsing for expressions, recursive-descent for statements, AST design, symbol tables with scoped hash maps, type checking basics, error recovery strategies, and LLVM IR generation via the C API or llvm-sys.

When to Use

• Implementing a new programming language or DSL
• Adding expression parsing to an interpreter or config language
• Designing AST node hierarchies in C or Rust
• Building scoped symbol tables for variables and functions
• Implementing basic type inference or checking
• Emitting LLVM IR from a typed AST

Workflow

1. Pipeline overview

Source → Lexer (tokens) → Parser (AST) → Type checker → IR generator → LLVM IR

2. Lexer — hand-written DFA

typedef enum {
    TOK_EOF, TOK_INT, TOK_IDENT, TOK_PLUS, TOK_MINUS,
    TOK_LPAREN, TOK_RPAREN, TOK_SEMI, TOK_EQ,
} TokenKind;

typedef struct {
    TokenKind kind;
    const char *start;
    int length;
    int64_t int_val;
} Token;

typedef struct {
    const char *src;
    int pos;
    int line;
} Lexer;

static void skip_whitespace(Lexer *l) {
    while (l->src[l->pos] == ' ' || l->src[l->pos] == '\n') l->pos++;
}

Token lexer_next(Lexer *l) {
    skip_whitespace(l);
    const char *start = &l->src[l->pos];

    if (isdigit(l->src[l->pos])) {
        int64_t val = 0;
        while (isdigit(l->src[l->pos]))
            val = val * 10 + (l->src[l->pos++] - '0');
        return (Token){ TOK_INT, start, l->pos - (start - l->src), val };
    }
    if (isalpha(l->src[l->pos])) {
        while (isalnum(l->src[l->pos])) l->pos++;
        return (Token){ TOK_IDENT, start, l->pos - (start - l->src), 0 };
    }
    char c = l->src[l->pos++];
    switch (c) {
        case '+': return (Token){ TOK_PLUS, start, 1, 0 };
        case '(': return (Token){ TOK_LPAREN, start, 1, 0 };
        case ')': return (Token){ TOK_RPAREN, start, 1, 0 };
        case ';': return (Token){ TOK_SEMI, start, 1, 0 };
        default:  return (Token){ TOK_EOF, start, 0, 0 };
    }
}