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Reviewer: David Thomas Barnard

After a review of traditional compiler architecture and issues (and notations), Muchnick quickly moves on to more difficult material that is not covered in introductory books and courses. This book is designed for practitioners and advanced students (either graduate students, or undergraduates who have already taken introductory courses). A background in data structures, algorithms, compilers, architecture, and assembly language programming is required. Following a foreword by Susan Graham, there are 21 chapters, as follows: Introduction to Advanced Topics Informal Compiler Algorithm Notation (ICAN) Symbol-Table Structure Intermediate Representations Run-Time Support Producing Code Generators Automatically Control-Flow Analysis Data-Flow Analysis Dependence Analysis and Dependence Graphs Alias Analysis Introduction to Optimization Early Optimizations Redundancy Elimination Loop Optimizations Procedure Optimizations Register Allocation Code Scheduling Control-Flow and Low-Level Optimizations Interprocedural Analysis and Optimization Optimization for the Memory Hierarchy Case Studies of Compilers and Future Trends There are also three appendices: “Guide to Assembly Languages Used in this Book”; “Representation of Sets, Sequences, Trees, DAGs, and Functions”; and “Software Resources.” The presentation uses a blend of mathematical description, algorithms (of which there are many) written in the ICAN notation introduced in the second chapter, and examples. The notations for internal compiler communication used in the examples are also introduced in the book. The medium-level intermediate representation (MIR) is used in many cases, but there are low-level and high-level variants that are appropriate for some of the optimization discussions. Actual code sequences are presented for some examples, and many examples use flow diagrams or tree diagrams. The final chapter uses several industrial compilers as examples, considering how the various techniques in the book have been applied. The authors experience has prepared him to write such a book. He has been a university professor and has industrial experience. He has been involved in the implementation of compilers for two different systems: the PA-RISC at Hewlett-Packard and the SPARC at Sun Microsystems. The book is organized and presented well. It contains a lot of material, so it can be used eithe r as a reference or as a textbook for an advanced course. It will be useful to instructors, researchers, and practitioners.