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|  | <h1>Kaleidoscope: Tutorial Introduction and the Lexer</h1> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <ul> | 
|  | <li><a href="index.html">Up to Tutorial Index</a></li> | 
|  | <li>Chapter 1 | 
|  | <ol> | 
|  | <li><a href="#intro">Tutorial Introduction</a></li> | 
|  | <li><a href="#language">The Basic Language</a></li> | 
|  | <li><a href="#lexer">The Lexer</a></li> | 
|  | </ol> | 
|  | </li> | 
|  | <li><a href="LangImpl2.html">Chapter 2</a>: Implementing a Parser and AST</li> | 
|  | </ul> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div class="doc_author"> | 
|  | <p>Written by <a href="mailto:sabre@nondot.org">Chris Lattner</a></p> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> | 
|  | <h2><a name="intro">Tutorial Introduction</a></h2> | 
|  | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>Welcome to the "Implementing a language with LLVM" tutorial.  This tutorial | 
|  | runs through the implementation of a simple language, showing how fun and | 
|  | easy it can be.  This tutorial will get you up and started as well as help to | 
|  | build a framework you can extend to other languages.  The code in this tutorial | 
|  | can also be used as a playground to hack on other LLVM specific things. | 
|  | </p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p> | 
|  | The goal of this tutorial is to progressively unveil our language, describing | 
|  | how it is built up over time.  This will let us cover a fairly broad range of | 
|  | language design and LLVM-specific usage issues, showing and explaining the code | 
|  | for it all along the way, without overwhelming you with tons of details up | 
|  | front.</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>It is useful to point out ahead of time that this tutorial is really about | 
|  | teaching compiler techniques and LLVM specifically, <em>not</em> about teaching | 
|  | modern and sane software engineering principles.  In practice, this means that | 
|  | we'll take a number of shortcuts to simplify the exposition.  For example, the | 
|  | code leaks memory, uses global variables all over the place, doesn't use nice | 
|  | design patterns like <a | 
|  | href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitor_pattern">visitors</a>, etc... but it | 
|  | is very simple.  If you dig in and use the code as a basis for future projects, | 
|  | fixing these deficiencies shouldn't be hard.</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>I've tried to put this tutorial together in a way that makes chapters easy to | 
|  | skip over if you are already familiar with or are uninterested in the various | 
|  | pieces.  The structure of the tutorial is: | 
|  | </p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <ul> | 
|  | <li><b><a href="#language">Chapter #1</a>: Introduction to the Kaleidoscope | 
|  | language, and the definition of its Lexer</b> - This shows where we are going | 
|  | and the basic functionality that we want it to do.  In order to make this | 
|  | tutorial maximally understandable and hackable, we choose to implement | 
|  | everything in C++ instead of using lexer and parser generators.  LLVM obviously | 
|  | works just fine with such tools, feel free to use one if you prefer.</li> | 
|  | <li><b><a href="LangImpl2.html">Chapter #2</a>: Implementing a Parser and | 
|  | AST</b> - With the lexer in place, we can talk about parsing techniques and | 
|  | basic AST construction.  This tutorial describes recursive descent parsing and | 
|  | operator precedence parsing.  Nothing in Chapters 1 or 2 is LLVM-specific, | 
|  | the code doesn't even link in LLVM at this point. :)</li> | 
|  | <li><b><a href="LangImpl3.html">Chapter #3</a>: Code generation to LLVM IR</b> - | 
|  | With the AST ready, we can show off how easy generation of LLVM IR really | 
|  | is.</li> | 
|  | <li><b><a href="LangImpl4.html">Chapter #4</a>: Adding JIT and Optimizer | 
|  | Support</b> - Because a lot of people are interested in using LLVM as a JIT, | 
|  | we'll dive right into it and show you the 3 lines it takes to add JIT support. | 
|  | LLVM is also useful in many other ways, but this is one simple and "sexy" way | 
|  | to shows off its power. :)</li> | 
|  | <li><b><a href="LangImpl5.html">Chapter #5</a>: Extending the Language: Control | 
|  | Flow</b> - With the language up and running, we show how to extend it with | 
|  | control flow operations (if/then/else and a 'for' loop).  This gives us a chance | 
|  | to talk about simple SSA construction and control flow.</li> | 
|  | <li><b><a href="LangImpl6.html">Chapter #6</a>: Extending the Language: | 
|  | User-defined Operators</b> - This is a silly but fun chapter that talks about | 
|  | extending the language to let the user program define their own arbitrary | 
|  | unary and binary operators (with assignable precedence!).  This lets us build a | 
|  | significant piece of the "language" as library routines.</li> | 
|  | <li><b><a href="LangImpl7.html">Chapter #7</a>: Extending the Language: Mutable | 
|  | Variables</b> - This chapter talks about adding user-defined local variables | 
|  | along with an assignment operator.  The interesting part about this is how | 
|  | easy and trivial it is to construct SSA form in LLVM: no, LLVM does <em>not</em> | 
|  | require your front-end to construct SSA form!</li> | 
|  | <li><b><a href="LangImpl8.html">Chapter #8</a>: Conclusion and other useful LLVM | 
|  | tidbits</b> - This chapter wraps up the series by talking about potential | 
|  | ways to extend the language, but also includes a bunch of pointers to info about | 
|  | "special topics" like adding garbage collection support, exceptions, debugging, | 
|  | support for "spaghetti stacks", and a bunch of other tips and tricks.</li> | 
|  |  | 
|  | </ul> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>By the end of the tutorial, we'll have written a bit less than 700 lines of | 
|  | non-comment, non-blank, lines of code.  With this small amount of code, we'll | 
|  | have built up a very reasonable compiler for a non-trivial language including | 
|  | a hand-written lexer, parser, AST, as well as code generation support with a JIT | 
|  | compiler.  While other systems may have interesting "hello world" tutorials, | 
|  | I think the breadth of this tutorial is a great testament to the strengths of | 
|  | LLVM and why you should consider it if you're interested in language or compiler | 
|  | design.</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>A note about this tutorial: we expect you to extend the language and play | 
|  | with it on your own.  Take the code and go crazy hacking away at it, compilers | 
|  | don't need to be scary creatures - it can be a lot of fun to play with | 
|  | languages!</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> | 
|  | <h2><a name="language">The Basic Language</a></h2> | 
|  | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>This tutorial will be illustrated with a toy language that we'll call | 
|  | "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope">Kaleidoscope</a>" (derived | 
|  | from "meaning beautiful, form, and view"). | 
|  | Kaleidoscope is a procedural language that allows you to define functions, use | 
|  | conditionals, math, etc.  Over the course of the tutorial, we'll extend | 
|  | Kaleidoscope to support the if/then/else construct, a for loop, user defined | 
|  | operators, JIT compilation with a simple command line interface, etc.</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>Because we want to keep things simple, the only datatype in Kaleidoscope is a | 
|  | 64-bit floating point type (aka 'double' in C parlance).  As such, all values | 
|  | are implicitly double precision and the language doesn't require type | 
|  | declarations.  This gives the language a very nice and simple syntax.  For | 
|  | example, the following simple example computes <a | 
|  | href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number">Fibonacci numbers:</a></p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div class="doc_code"> | 
|  | <pre> | 
|  | # Compute the x'th fibonacci number. | 
|  | def fib(x) | 
|  | if x < 3 then | 
|  | 1 | 
|  | else | 
|  | fib(x-1)+fib(x-2) | 
|  |  | 
|  | # This expression will compute the 40th number. | 
|  | fib(40) | 
|  | </pre> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>We also allow Kaleidoscope to call into standard library functions (the LLVM | 
|  | JIT makes this completely trivial).  This means that you can use the 'extern' | 
|  | keyword to define a function before you use it (this is also useful for mutually | 
|  | recursive functions).  For example:</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div class="doc_code"> | 
|  | <pre> | 
|  | extern sin(arg); | 
|  | extern cos(arg); | 
|  | extern atan2(arg1 arg2); | 
|  |  | 
|  | atan2(sin(.4), cos(42)) | 
|  | </pre> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>A more interesting example is included in Chapter 6 where we write a little | 
|  | Kaleidoscope application that <a href="LangImpl6.html#example">displays | 
|  | a Mandelbrot Set</a> at various levels of magnification.</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>Lets dive into the implementation of this language!</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> | 
|  | <h2><a name="lexer">The Lexer</a></h2> | 
|  | <!-- *********************************************************************** --> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>When it comes to implementing a language, the first thing needed is | 
|  | the ability to process a text file and recognize what it says.  The traditional | 
|  | way to do this is to use a "<a | 
|  | href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_analysis">lexer</a>" (aka 'scanner') | 
|  | to break the input up into "tokens".  Each token returned by the lexer includes | 
|  | a token code and potentially some metadata (e.g. the numeric value of a number). | 
|  | First, we define the possibilities: | 
|  | </p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div class="doc_code"> | 
|  | <pre> | 
|  | // The lexer returns tokens [0-255] if it is an unknown character, otherwise one | 
|  | // of these for known things. | 
|  | enum Token { | 
|  | tok_eof = -1, | 
|  |  | 
|  | // commands | 
|  | tok_def = -2, tok_extern = -3, | 
|  |  | 
|  | // primary | 
|  | tok_identifier = -4, tok_number = -5, | 
|  | }; | 
|  |  | 
|  | static std::string IdentifierStr;  // Filled in if tok_identifier | 
|  | static double NumVal;              // Filled in if tok_number | 
|  | </pre> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>Each token returned by our lexer will either be one of the Token enum values | 
|  | or it will be an 'unknown' character like '+', which is returned as its ASCII | 
|  | value.  If the current token is an identifier, the <tt>IdentifierStr</tt> | 
|  | global variable holds the name of the identifier.  If the current token is a | 
|  | numeric literal (like 1.0), <tt>NumVal</tt> holds its value.  Note that we use | 
|  | global variables for simplicity, this is not the best choice for a real language | 
|  | implementation :). | 
|  | </p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>The actual implementation of the lexer is a single function named | 
|  | <tt>gettok</tt>. The <tt>gettok</tt> function is called to return the next token | 
|  | from standard input.  Its definition starts as:</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div class="doc_code"> | 
|  | <pre> | 
|  | /// gettok - Return the next token from standard input. | 
|  | static int gettok() { | 
|  | static int LastChar = ' '; | 
|  |  | 
|  | // Skip any whitespace. | 
|  | while (isspace(LastChar)) | 
|  | LastChar = getchar(); | 
|  | </pre> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p> | 
|  | <tt>gettok</tt> works by calling the C <tt>getchar()</tt> function to read | 
|  | characters one at a time from standard input.  It eats them as it recognizes | 
|  | them and stores the last character read, but not processed, in LastChar.  The | 
|  | first thing that it has to do is ignore whitespace between tokens.  This is | 
|  | accomplished with the loop above.</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>The next thing <tt>gettok</tt> needs to do is recognize identifiers and | 
|  | specific keywords like "def".  Kaleidoscope does this with this simple loop:</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div class="doc_code"> | 
|  | <pre> | 
|  | if (isalpha(LastChar)) { // identifier: [a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]* | 
|  | IdentifierStr = LastChar; | 
|  | while (isalnum((LastChar = getchar()))) | 
|  | IdentifierStr += LastChar; | 
|  |  | 
|  | if (IdentifierStr == "def") return tok_def; | 
|  | if (IdentifierStr == "extern") return tok_extern; | 
|  | return tok_identifier; | 
|  | } | 
|  | </pre> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>Note that this code sets the '<tt>IdentifierStr</tt>' global whenever it | 
|  | lexes an identifier.  Also, since language keywords are matched by the same | 
|  | loop, we handle them here inline.  Numeric values are similar:</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div class="doc_code"> | 
|  | <pre> | 
|  | if (isdigit(LastChar) || LastChar == '.') {   // Number: [0-9.]+ | 
|  | std::string NumStr; | 
|  | do { | 
|  | NumStr += LastChar; | 
|  | LastChar = getchar(); | 
|  | } while (isdigit(LastChar) || LastChar == '.'); | 
|  |  | 
|  | NumVal = strtod(NumStr.c_str(), 0); | 
|  | return tok_number; | 
|  | } | 
|  | </pre> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>This is all pretty straight-forward code for processing input.  When reading | 
|  | a numeric value from input, we use the C <tt>strtod</tt> function to convert it | 
|  | to a numeric value that we store in <tt>NumVal</tt>.  Note that this isn't doing | 
|  | sufficient error checking: it will incorrectly read "1.23.45.67" and handle it as | 
|  | if you typed in "1.23".  Feel free to extend it :).  Next we handle comments: | 
|  | </p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div class="doc_code"> | 
|  | <pre> | 
|  | if (LastChar == '#') { | 
|  | // Comment until end of line. | 
|  | do LastChar = getchar(); | 
|  | while (LastChar != EOF && LastChar != '\n' && LastChar != '\r'); | 
|  |  | 
|  | if (LastChar != EOF) | 
|  | return gettok(); | 
|  | } | 
|  | </pre> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>We handle comments by skipping to the end of the line and then return the | 
|  | next token.  Finally, if the input doesn't match one of the above cases, it is | 
|  | either an operator character like '+' or the end of the file.  These are handled | 
|  | with this code:</p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <div class="doc_code"> | 
|  | <pre> | 
|  | // Check for end of file.  Don't eat the EOF. | 
|  | if (LastChar == EOF) | 
|  | return tok_eof; | 
|  |  | 
|  | // Otherwise, just return the character as its ascii value. | 
|  | int ThisChar = LastChar; | 
|  | LastChar = getchar(); | 
|  | return ThisChar; | 
|  | } | 
|  | </pre> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <p>With this, we have the complete lexer for the basic Kaleidoscope language | 
|  | (the <a href="LangImpl2.html#code">full code listing</a> for the Lexer is | 
|  | available in the <a href="LangImpl2.html">next chapter</a> of the tutorial). | 
|  | Next we'll <a href="LangImpl2.html">build a simple parser that uses this to | 
|  | build an Abstract Syntax Tree</a>.  When we have that, we'll include a driver | 
|  | so that you can use the lexer and parser together. | 
|  | </p> | 
|  |  | 
|  | <a href="LangImpl2.html">Next: Implementing a Parser and AST</a> | 
|  | </div> | 
|  |  | 
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