tiny-complier
'use strict';
/**
* Today we're going to write a compiler together. But not just any compiler... A
* super duper teeny tiny compiler! A compiler that is so small that if you
* remove all the comments this file would only be ~200 lines of actual code.
*
* We're going to compile some lisp-like function calls into some C-like
* function calls.
*
* If you are not familiar with one or the other. I'll just give you a quick intro.
*
* If we had two functions `add` and `subtract` they would be written like this:
*
* LISP C
*
* 2 + 2 (add 2 2) add(2, 2)
* 4 - 2 (subtract 4 2) subtract(4, 2)
* 2 + (4 - 2) (add 2 (subtract 4 2)) add(2, subtract(4, 2))
*
* Easy peezy right?
*
* Well good, because this is exactly what we are going to compile. While this
* is neither a complete LISP or C syntax, it will be enough of the syntax to
* demonstrate many of the major pieces of a modern compiler.
*/
/**
* Most compilers break down into three primary stages: Parsing, Transformation,
* and Code Generation
*
* 1. *Parsing* is taking raw code and turning it into a more abstract
* representation of the code.
*
* 2. *Transformation* takes this abstract representation and manipulates to do
* whatever the compiler wants it to.
*
* 3. *Code Generation* takes the transformed representation of the code and
* turns it into new code.
*/
/**
* Parsing
* -------
*
* Parsing typically gets broken down into two phases: Lexical Analysis and
* Syntactic Analysis.
*
* 1. *Lexical Analysis* takes the raw code and splits it apart into these things
* called tokens by a thing called a tokenizer (or lexer).
*
* Tokens are an array of tiny little objects that describe an isolated piece
* of the syntax. They could be numbers, labels, punctuation, operators,
* whatever.
*
* 2. *Syntactic Analysis* takes the tokens and reformats them into a
* representation that describes each part of the syntax and their relation
* to one another. This is known as an intermediate representation or
* Abstract Syntax Tree.
*
* An Abstract Syntax Tree, or AST for short, is a deeply nested object that
* represents code in a way that is both easy to work with and tells us a lot
* of information.
*
* For the following syntax:
*
* (add 2 (subtract 4 2))
*
* Tokens might look something like this:
*
* [
* { type: 'paren', value: '(' },
* { type: 'name', value: 'add' },
* { type: 'number', value: '2' },
* { type: 'paren', value: '(' },
* { type: 'name', value: 'subtract' },
* { type: 'number', value: '4' },
* { type: 'number', value: '2' },
* { type: 'paren', value: ')' },
* { type: 'paren', value: ')' },
* ]
*
* And an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) might look like this:
*
* {
* type: 'Program',
* body: [{
* type: 'CallExpression',
* name: 'add',
* params: [{
* type: 'NumberLiteral',
* value: '2',
* }, {
* type: 'CallExpression',
* name: 'subtract',
* params: [{
* type: 'NumberLiteral',
* value: '4',
* }, {
* type: 'NumberLiteral',
* value: '2',
* }]
* }]
* }]
* }
*/
/**
* Transformation
* --------------
*
* The next type of stage for a compiler is transformation. Again, this just
* takes the AST from the last step and makes changes to it. It can manipulate
* the AST in the same language or it can translate it into an entirely new
* language.
*
* Let’s look at how we would transform an AST.
*
* You might notice that our AST has elements within it that look very similar.
* There are these objects with a type property. Each of these are known as an
* AST Node. These nodes have defined properties on them that describe one
* isolated part of the tree.
*
* We can have a node for a "NumberLiteral":
*
* {
* type: 'NumberLiteral',
* value: '2',
* }
*
* Or maybe a node for a "CallExpression":
*
* {
* type: 'CallExpression',
* name: 'subtract',
* params: [...nested nodes go here...],
* }
*
* When transforming the AST we can manipulate nodes by
* adding/removing/replacing properties, we can add new nodes, remove nodes, or
* we could leave the existing AST alone and create an entirely new one based
* on it.
*
* Since we’re targeting a new language, we’re going to focus on creating an
* entirely new AST that is specific to the target language.
*
* Traversal
* ---------
*
* In order to navigate through all of these nodes, we need to be able to
* traverse through them. This traversal process goes to each node in the AST
* depth-first.
*
* {
* type: 'Program',
* body: [{
* type: 'CallExpression',
* name: 'add',
* params: [{
* type: 'NumberLiteral',
* value: '2'
* }, {
* type: 'CallExpression',
* name: 'subtract',
* params: [{
* type: 'NumberLiteral',
* value: '4'
* }, {
* type: 'NumberLiteral',
* value: '2'
* }]
* }]
* }]
* }
*
* So for the above AST we would go:
*
* 1. Program - Starting at the top level of the AST
* 2. CallExpression (add) - Moving to the first element of the Program's body
* 3. NumberLiteral (2) - Moving to the first element of CallExpression's params
* 4. CallExpression (subtract) - Moving to the second element of CallExpression's params
* 5. NumberLiteral (4) - Moving to the first element of CallExpression's params
* 6. NumberLiteral (2) - Moving to the second element of CallExpression's params
*
* If we were manipulating this AST directly, instead of creating a separate AST,
* we would likely introduce all sorts of abstractions here. But just visiting
* each node in the tree is enough for what we're trying to do.
*
* The reason I use the word "visiting" is because there is this pattern of how
* to represent operations on elements of an object structure.
*
* Visitors
* --------
*
* The basic idea here is that we are going to create a “visitor” object that
* has methods that will accept different node types.
*
* var visitor = {
* NumberLiteral() {},
* CallExpression() {},
* };
*
* When we traverse our AST, we will call the methods on this visitor whenever we
* "enter" a node of a matching type.
*
* In order to make this useful we will also pass the node and a reference to
* the parent node.
*
* var visitor = {
* NumberLiteral(node, parent) {},
* CallExpression(node, parent) {},
* };
*
* However, there also exists the possibility of calling things on "exit". Imagine
* our tree structure from before in list form:
*
* - Program
* - CallExpression
* - NumberLiteral
* - CallExpression
* - NumberLiteral
* - NumberLiteral
*
* As we traverse down, we're going to reach branches with dead ends. As we
* finish each branch of the tree we "exit" it. So going down the tree we
* "enter" each node, and going back up we "exit".
*
* -> Program (enter)
* -> CallExpression (enter)
* -> Number Literal (enter)
* <- Number Literal (exit)
* -> Call Expression (enter)
* -> Number Literal (enter)
* <- Number Literal (exit)
* -> Number Literal (enter)
* <- Number Literal (exit)
* <- CallExpression (exit)
* <- CallExpression (exit)
* <- Program (exit)
*
* In order to support that, the final form of our visitor will look like this:
*
* var visitor = {
* NumberLiteral: {
* enter(node, parent) {},
* exit(node, parent) {},
* }
* };
*/
/**
* Code Generation
* ---------------
*
* The final phase of a compiler is code generation. Sometimes compilers will do
* things that overlap with transformation, but for the most part code
* generation just means take our AST and string-ify code back out.
*
* Code generators work several different ways, some compilers will reuse the
* tokens from earlier, others will have created a separate representation of
* the code so that they can print nodes linearly, but from what I can tell most
* will use the same AST we just created, which is what we’re going to focus on.
*
* Effectively our code generator will know how to “print” all of the different
* node types of the AST, and it will recursively call itself to print nested
* nodes until everything is printed into one long string of code.
*/
/**
* And that's it! That's all the different pieces of a compiler.
*
* Now that isn’t to say every compiler looks exactly like I described here.
* Compilers serve many different purposes, and they might need more steps than
* I have detailed.
*
* But now you should have a general high-level idea of what most compilers look
* like.
*
* Now that I’ve explained all of this, you’re all good to go write your own
* compilers right?
*
* Just kidding, that's what I'm here to help with :P
*
* So let's begin...
*/
/**
* ============================================================================
* (/^▽^)/
* THE TOKENIZER!
* ============================================================================
*/
/**
* We're gonna start off with our first phase of parsing, lexical analysis, with
* the tokenizer.
*
* We're just going to take our string of code and break it down into an array
* of tokens.
*
* (add 2 (subtract 4 2)) => [{ type: 'paren', value: '(' }, ...]
*/
// We start by accepting an input string of code, and we're gonna set up two
// things...
function tokenizer(input) {
// A `current` variable for tracking our position in the code like a cursor.
let current = 0;
// And a `tokens` array for pushing our tokens to.
let tokens = [];
// We start by creating a `while` loop where we are setting up our `current`
// variable to be incremented as much as we want `inside` the loop.
//
// We do this because we may want to increment `current` many times within a
// single loop because our tokens can be any length.
while (current < input.length) {
// We're also going to store the `current` character in the `input`.
let char = input[current];
// The first thing we want to check for is an open parenthesis. This will
// later be used for `CallExpression` but for now we only care about the
// character.
//
// We check to see if we have an open parenthesis:
if (char === '(') {
// If we do, we push a new token with the type `paren` and set the value
// to an open parenthesis.
tokens.push({
type: 'paren',
value: '(',
});
// Then we increment `current`
current++;
// And we `continue` onto the next cycle of the loop.
continue;
}
// Next we're going to check for a closing parenthesis. We do the same exact
// thing as before: Check for a closing parenthesis, add a new token,
// increment `current`, and `continue`.
if (char === ')') {
tokens.push({
type: 'paren',
value: ')',
});
current++;
continue;
}
// Moving on, we're now going to check for whitespace. This is interesting
// because we care that whitespace exists to separate characters, but it
// isn't actually important for us to store as a token. We would only throw
// it out later.
//
// So here we're just going to test for existence and if it does exist we're
// going to just `continue` on.
let WHITESPACE = /\s/;
if (WHITESPACE.test(char)) {
current++;
continue;
}
// The next type of token is a number. This is different than what we have
// seen before because a number could be any number of characters and we
// want to capture the entire sequence of characters as one token.
//
// (add 123 456)
// ^^^ ^^^
// Only two separate tokens
//
// So we start this off when we encounter the first number in a sequence.
let NUMBERS = /[0-9]/;
if (NUMBERS.test(char)) {
// We're going to create a `value` string that we are going to push
// characters to.
let value = '';
// Then we're going to loop through each character in the sequence until
// we encounter a character that is not a number, pushing each character
// that is a number to our `value` and incrementing `current` as we go.
while (NUMBERS.test(char)) {
value += char;
char = input[++current];
}
// After that we push our `number` token to the `tokens` array.
tokens.push({ type: 'number', value });
// And we continue on.
continue;
}
// We'll also add support for strings in our language which will be any
// text surrounded by double quotes (").
//
// (concat "foo" "bar")
// ^^^ ^^^ string tokens
//
// We'll start by checking for the opening quote:
if (char === '"') {
// Keep a `value` variable for building up our string token.
let value = '';
// We'll skip the opening double quote in our token.
char = input[++current];
// Then we'll iterate through each character until we reach another
// double quote.
while (char !== '"') {
value += char;
char = input[++current];
}
// Skip the closing double quote.
char = input[++current];
// And add our `string` token to the `tokens` array.
tokens.push({ type: 'string', value });
continue;
}
// The last type of token will be a `name` token. This is a sequence of
// letters instead of numbers, that are the names of functions in our lisp
// syntax.
//
// (add 2 4)
// ^^^
// Name token
//
let LETTERS = /[a-z]/i;
if (LETTERS.test(char)) {
let value = '';
// Again we're just going to loop through all the letters pushing them to
// a value.
while (LETTERS.test(char)) {
value += char;
char = input[++current];
}
// And pushing that value as a token with the type `name` and continuing.
tokens.push({ type: 'name', value });
continue;
}
// Finally if we have not matched a character by now, we're going to throw
// an error and completely exit.
throw new TypeError('I dont know what this character is: ' + char);
}
// Then at the end of our `tokenizer` we simply return the tokens array.
return tokens;
}
/**
* ============================================================================
* ヽ/❀o ل͜ o\ﾉ
* THE PARSER!!!
* ============================================================================
*/
/**
* For our parser we're going to take our array of tokens and turn it into an
* AST.
*
* [{ type: 'paren', value: '(' }, ...] => { type: 'Program', body: [...] }
*/
// Okay, so we define a `parser` function that accepts our array of `tokens`.
function parser(tokens) {
// Again we keep a `current` variable that we will use as a cursor.
let current = 0;
// But this time we're going to use recursion instead of a `while` loop. So we
// define a `walk` function.
function walk() {
// Inside the walk function we start by grabbing the `current` token.
let token = tokens[current];
// We're going to split each type of token off into a different code path,
// starting off with `number` tokens.
//
// We test to see if we have a `number` token.
if (token.type === 'number') {
// If we have one, we'll increment `current`.
current++;
// And we'll return a new AST node called `NumberLiteral` and setting its
// value to the value of our token.
return {
type: 'NumberLiteral',
value: token.value,
};
}
// If we have a string we will do the same as number and create a
// `StringLiteral` node.
if (token.type === 'string') {
current++;
return {
type: 'StringLiteral',
value: token.value,
};
}
// Next we're going to look for CallExpressions. We start this off when we
// encounter an open parenthesis.
if (
token.type === 'paren' &&
token.value === '('
) {
// We'll increment `current` to skip the parenthesis since we don't care
// about it in our AST.
token = tokens[++current];
// We create a base node with the type `CallExpression`, and we're going
// to set the name as the current token's value since the next token after
// the open parenthesis is the name of the function.
let node = {
type: 'CallExpression',
name: token.value,
params: [],
};
// We increment `current` *again* to skip the name token.
token = tokens[++current];
// And now we want to loop through each token that will be the `params` of
// our `CallExpression` until we encounter a closing parenthesis.
//
// Now this is where recursion comes in. Instead of trying to parse a
// potentially infinitely nested set of nodes we're going to rely on
// recursion to resolve things.
//
// To explain this, let's take our Lisp code. You can see that the
// parameters of the `add` are a number and a nested `CallExpression` that
// includes its own numbers.
//
// (add 2 (subtract 4 2))
//
// You'll also notice that in our tokens array we have multiple closing
// parenthesis.
//
// [
// { type: 'paren', value: '(' },
// { type: 'name', value: 'add' },
// { type: 'number', value: '2' },
// { type: 'paren', value: '(' },
// { type: 'name', value: 'subtract' },
// { type: 'number', value: '4' },
// { type: 'number', value: '2' },
// { type: 'paren', value: ')' }, <<< Closing parenthesis
// { type: 'paren', value: ')' }, <<< Closing parenthesis
// ]
//
// We're going to rely on the nested `walk` function to increment our
// `current` variable past any nested `CallExpression`.
// So we create a `while` loop that will continue until it encounters a
// token with a `type` of `'paren'` and a `value` of a closing
// parenthesis.
while (
(token.type !== 'paren') ||
(token.type === 'paren' && token.value !== ')')
) {
// we'll call the `walk` function which will return a `node` and we'll
// push it into our `node.params`.
node.params.push(walk());
token = tokens[current];
}
// Finally we will increment `current` one last time to skip the closing
// parenthesis.
current++;
// And return the node.
return node;
}
// Again, if we haven't recognized the token type by now we're going to
// throw an error.
throw new TypeError(token.type);
}
// Now, we're going to create our AST which will have a root which is a
// `Program` node.
let ast = {
type: 'Program',
body: [],
};
// And we're going to kickstart our `walk` function, pushing nodes to our
// `ast.body` array.
//
// The reason we are doing this inside a loop is because our program can have
// `CallExpression` after one another instead of being nested.
//
// (add 2 2)
// (subtract 4 2)
//
while (current < tokens.length) {
ast.body.push(walk());
}
// At the end of our parser we'll return the AST.
return ast;
}
/**
* ============================================================================
* ⌒(❀>◞౪◟<❀)⌒
* THE TRAVERSER!!!
* ============================================================================
*/
/**
* So now we have our AST, and we want to be able to visit different nodes with
* a visitor. We need to be able to call the methods on the visitor whenever we
* encounter a node with a matching type.
*
* traverse(ast, {
* Program: {
* enter(node, parent) {
* // ...
* },
* exit(node, parent) {
* // ...
* },
* },
*
* CallExpression: {
* enter(node, parent) {
* // ...
* },
* exit(node, parent) {
* // ...
* },
* },
*
* NumberLiteral: {
* enter(node, parent) {
* // ...
* },
* exit(node, parent) {
* // ...
* },
* },
* });
*/
// So we define a traverser function which accepts an AST and a
// visitor. Inside we're going to define two functions...
function traverser(ast, visitor) {
// A `traverseArray` function that will allow us to iterate over an array and
// call the next function that we will define: `traverseNode`.
function traverseArray(array, parent) {
array.forEach(child => {
traverseNode(child, parent);
});
}
// `traverseNode` will accept a `node` and its `parent` node. So that it can
// pass both to our visitor methods.
function traverseNode(node, parent) {
// We start by testing for the existence of a method on the visitor with a
// matching `type`.
let methods = visitor[node.type];
// If there is an `enter` method for this node type we'll call it with the
// `node` and its `parent`.
if (methods && methods.enter) {
methods.enter(node, parent);
}
// Next we are going to split things up by the current node type.
switch (node.type) {
// We'll start with our top level `Program`. Since Program nodes have a
// property named body that has an array of nodes, we will call
// `traverseArray` to traverse down into them.
//
// (Remember that `traverseArray` will in turn call `traverseNode` so we
// are causing the tree to be traversed recursively)
case 'Program':
traverseArray(node.body, node);
break;
// Next we do the same with `CallExpression` and traverse their `params`.
case 'CallExpression':
traverseArray(node.params, node);
break;
// In the cases of `NumberLiteral` and `StringLiteral` we don't have any
// child nodes to visit, so we'll just break.
case 'NumberLiteral':
case 'StringLiteral':
break;
// And again, if we haven't recognized the node type then we'll throw an
// error.
default:
throw new TypeError(node.type);
}
// If there is an `exit` method for this node type we'll call it with the
// `node` and its `parent`.
if (methods && methods.exit) {
methods.exit(node, parent);
}
}
// Finally we kickstart the traverser by calling `traverseNode` with our ast
// with no `parent` because the top level of the AST doesn't have a parent.
traverseNode(ast, null);
}
/**
* ============================================================================
* ⁽(◍˃̵͈̑ᴗ˂̵͈̑)⁽
* THE TRANSFORMER!!!
* ============================================================================
*/
/**
* Next up, the transformer. Our transformer is going to take the AST that we
* have built and pass it to our traverser function with a visitor and will
* create a new ast.
*
* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Original AST | Transformed AST
* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* { | {
* type: 'Program', | type: 'Program',
* body: [{ | body: [{
* type: 'CallExpression', | type: 'ExpressionStatement',
* name: 'add', | expression: {
* params: [{ | type: 'CallExpression',
* type: 'NumberLiteral', | callee: {
* value: '2' | type: 'Identifier',
* }, { | name: 'add'
* type: 'CallExpression', | },
* name: 'subtract', | arguments: [{
* params: [{ | type: 'NumberLiteral',
* type: 'NumberLiteral', | value: '2'
* value: '4' | }, {
* }, { | type: 'CallExpression',
* type: 'NumberLiteral', | callee: {
* value: '2' | type: 'Identifier',
* }] | name: 'subtract'
* }] | },
* }] | arguments: [{
* } | type: 'NumberLiteral',
* | value: '4'
* ---------------------------------- | }, {
* | type: 'NumberLiteral',
* | value: '2'
* | }]
* (sorry the other one is longer.) | }
* | }
* | }]
* | }
* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
*/
// So we have our transformer function which will accept the lisp ast.
function transformer(ast) {
// We'll create a `newAst` which like our previous AST will have a program
// node.
let newAst = {
type: 'Program',
body: [],
};
// Next I'm going to cheat a little and create a bit of a hack. We're going to
// use a property named `context` on our parent nodes that we're going to push
// nodes to their parent's `context`. Normally you would have a better
// abstraction than this, but for our purposes this keeps things simple.
//
// Just take note that the context is a reference *from* the old ast *to* the
// new ast.
ast._context = newAst.body;
// We'll start by calling the traverser function with our ast and a visitor.
traverser(ast, {
// The first visitor method accepts any `NumberLiteral`
NumberLiteral: {
// We'll visit them on enter.
enter(node, parent) {
// We'll create a new node also named `NumberLiteral` that we will push to
// the parent context.
parent._context.push({
type: 'NumberLiteral',
value: node.value,
});
},
},
// Next we have `StringLiteral`
StringLiteral: {
enter(node, parent) {
parent._context.push({
type: 'StringLiteral',
value: node.value,
});
},
},
// Next up, `CallExpression`.
CallExpression: {
enter(node, parent) {
// We start creating a new node `CallExpression` with a nested
// `Identifier`.
let expression = {
type: 'CallExpression',
callee: {
type: 'Identifier',
name: node.name,
},
arguments: [],
};
// Next we're going to define a new context on the original
// `CallExpression` node that will reference the `expression`'s arguments
// so that we can push arguments.
node._context = expression.arguments;
// Then we're going to check if the parent node is a `CallExpression`.
// If it is not...
if (parent.type !== 'CallExpression') {
// We're going to wrap our `CallExpression` node with an
// `ExpressionStatement`. We do this because the top level
// `CallExpression` in JavaScript are actually statements.
expression = {
type: 'ExpressionStatement',
expression: expression,
};
}
// Last, we push our (possibly wrapped) `CallExpression` to the `parent`'s
// `context`.
parent._context.push(expression);
},
}
});
// At the end of our transformer function we'll return the new ast that we
// just created.
return newAst;
}
/**
* ============================================================================
* ヾ（〃＾∇＾）ﾉ♪
* THE CODE GENERATOR!!!!
* ============================================================================
*/
/**
* Now let's move onto our last phase: The Code Generator.
*
* Our code generator is going to recursively call itself to print each node in
* the tree into one giant string.
*/
function codeGenerator(node) {
// We'll break things down by the `type` of the `node`.
switch (node.type) {
// If we have a `Program` node. We will map through each node in the `body`
// and run them through the code generator and join them with a newline.
case 'Program':
return node.body.map(codeGenerator)
.join('\n');
// For `ExpressionStatement` we'll call the code generator on the nested
// expression and we'll add a semicolon...
case 'ExpressionStatement':
return (
codeGenerator(node.expression) +
';' // << (...because we like to code the *correct* way)
);
// For `CallExpression` we will print the `callee`, add an open
// parenthesis, we'll map through each node in the `arguments` array and run
// them through the code generator, joining them with a comma, and then
// we'll add a closing parenthesis.
case 'CallExpression':
return (
codeGenerator(node.callee) +
'(' +
node.arguments.map(codeGenerator)
.join(', ') +
')'
);
// For `Identifier` we'll just return the `node`'s name.
case 'Identifier':
return node.name;
// For `NumberLiteral` we'll just return the `node`'s value.
case 'NumberLiteral':
return node.value;
// For `StringLiteral` we'll add quotations around the `node`'s value.
case 'StringLiteral':
return '"' + node.value + '"';
// And if we haven't recognized the node, we'll throw an error.
default:
throw new TypeError(node.type);
}
}
/**
* ============================================================================
* (۶* ‘ヮ’)۶”
* !!!!!!!!THE COMPILER!!!!!!!!
* ============================================================================
*/
/**
* FINALLY! We'll create our `compiler` function. Here we will link together
* every part of the pipeline.
*
* 1. input => tokenizer => tokens
* 2. tokens => parser => ast
* 3. ast => transformer => newAst
* 4. newAst => generator => output
*/
function compiler(input) {
let tokens = tokenizer(input);
let ast = parser(tokens);
let newAst = transformer(ast);
let output = codeGenerator(newAst);
// and simply return the output!
return output;
}
/**
* ============================================================================
* (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)و
* !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YOU MADE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
* ============================================================================
*/
// Now I'm just exporting everything...
module.exports = {
tokenizer,
parser,
traverser,
transformer,
codeGenerator,
compiler,
};