Simple C Compiler

Developed a full-featured compiler for a subset of C, implementing sophisticated compilation pipeline stages:

This project was part of my CS250 Computer Architecture class at Purdue University.

Frontend

• Built lexical analyzer using Flex to handle C tokens, keywords, and complex string/character literals
• Implemented recursive descent parser with Bison/Yacc supporting:
  • Function definitions with parameter passing and return values
  • Control flow (if/else, while, for) with proper scoping
  • Complex expressions with operator precedence and associativity
  • Array declarations and pointer arithmetic

Semantic Analysis

• Implemented symbol table with hash-based lookup for global variables and functions
• Local variables supported by stack allocation through specialized compilation to x86-64 instructions
• Built type system supporting longs, chars, and pointers.
• Added semantic checks for type compatibility in assignments and operations.

Code Generation

• Generated optimized x86-64 assembly targeting Linux ABI
• Managed stack frames with proper alignment and calling conventions
• Features implemented in outputted x86-64 assembly:
  • Constant folding and propagation
  • Dead code elimination
  • Readable and formatted x86 code blocks in output