Compiler construction – a pedagogical approach
João José Neto, César Alberto Bravo Pariente, Fabrizio Leonardi · 2003
The aim of the present paper is to revisit some important topics regarding pedagogical issues on the teaching of concepts and techniques of programming languages and compiler construction. Essentially, a unified formal model is used in the proposed approach to explore the exposition of the students to a set of lessons with growing complexity, with a heavy practical component, all sharing the same common formal model. Experiments start with the definition of regular languages, aimed to introduce concepts and give the students familiarity with formal languages and their description through a metalanguage suitable for direct mapping into finite-state automata. Context-free languages are then considered as a simple extension of regular languages, both in grammar and acceptor aspects.