Array Tracing

Grammatically in ADA, there is no way to determine the difference between an array and a function call. So, in our abstract syntax tree, they both share the same type of node. However, as we traverse the abstract syntax tree to build our intermediate representation we run into array and function declarations and allocate space for them on the stack. So there, that's how I determine the difference. We keep a separate list for variables/arrays and functions.

Arrays were simple but converting between an AST, IRT, to Assembly was mind-boggling since implementing arrays was the first assembly chore I had to do.

Anyways, I just wrote checks for our array access it's about 14 lines of assembly code. This includes run-time bounds checking and a function call. I can think of a few small things to bring it down. I've reused registers and all that but I don't know.

So after all this, arrays are done, that's 2 assembly instructions for declarations, 9 for assignment and 14 for access.


By the way these are one dimensional static arrays. Multi-dimensional arrays are rather simple. Dynamic arrays, I still think I can do.

Anywho, I'm going to switch the back-end of this compiler and convert it to x86. I'm going to keep it as ADA and then try to implement other compiler type things. But other than that, that ends compilers for me. It's been interesting.