Review for Exam 1

• Read the book, think about the exercises. Work a few of them for practice.
• Make sure you understand the written homework assignments.
• Look through the notes from class
• Practice on the exam from last semester. (pdf, ps)

• Chapter 1
  • Why study languages
  • Language evaluation criteria
    • Readability
    • Writeability
    • Reliability
    • Cost
  • Language Categories
  • Implementation methods - compilation, interpretation
  • hardware vs. software computers
• Chapter 2
  • Language Evolution
• Chapter 3 (Sections 1-3)
  • syntax versus semantics
  • grammars
    • BNF and EBNF notation
    • derivation and generation of valid syntax
    • parse trees
    • precedence and associativity
    • ambiguity
  • Semantics
    • Attribute grammars
    • Weakest precondition
• Regular Expressions
• Chapter 4 (Sections 1, 2 and 4)
  • Lexical analysis
  • Parsing
  • Recursive descent parsing
  • Left recursion
  • Left factoring
• Chapter 5 Names, bindings, Type-checking and Scope
  • Naming conventions - keyword versus reserved word
  • Variable attributes
    • name
    • address
    • aliases
    • type
    • value
  • Binding times
  • Type checking
    • weak vs. strong typing
    • static vs. dynamic type checking
  • Scope and Lifetime
    • Scope - the code in which a particular variable is visible
      • Static scope - scope of a variable can be determined from the code
      • Dynamic scope - scope of a variable is determined from the call stack
  • Lifetime - the time during execution when a variable is bound to a particular memory location