Lexical Analysis in Compiler Design with
Example
What is Lexical analysis?
Lexical analysis is the very first phase in the compiler designing. It takes
the modified source code which is written in the form of sentences. In other
words, it helps you to converts a sequence of characters into a sequence of
tokens. The lexical analysis breaks this syntax into a series of tokens. It
removes any extra space or comment written in the source code.
Programs that perform lexical analysis are called lexical analyzers or
lexers. A lexer contains tokenizer or scanner. If the lexical analyzer detects
that the token is invalid, it generates an error. It reads character streams
from the source code, checks for legal tokens, and pass the data to the
syntax analyzer when it demands.
Example
How Pleasant Is The Weather?
See this example; Here, we can easily recognize that there are five words
How Pleasant, The, Weather, Is. This is very natural for us as we can
recognize the separators, blanks, and the punctuation symbol.
HowPl easantIs Th ewe ather?
Now, check this example, we can also read this. However, it will take some
time because separators are put in the Odd Places. It is not something
which comes to you immediately.
In this tutorial, you will learn
What is Lexical analysis?
Basic Terminologies:
Lexical Analyzer Architecture: How tokens are recognized
Roles of the Lexical analyzer
Lexical Errors
Error Recovery in Lexical Analyzer
Lexical Analyzer vs. Parser
Why separate Lexical and Parser?
Advantages of Lexical analysis
Disadvantage of Lexical analysis
Basic Terminologies
What's a lexeme?
A lexeme is a sequence of characters that are included in the source
program according to the matching pattern of a token. It is nothing but an
instance of a token.
What's a token?
The token is a sequence of characters which represents a unit of
information in the source program.
What is Pattern?
A pattern is a description which is used by the token. In the case of a
keyword which uses as a token, the pattern is a sequence of characters.
Lexical Analyzer Architecture: How tokens are
recognized
The main task of lexical analysis is to read input characters in the code and
produce tokens.
Lexical analyzer scans the entire source code of the program. It identifies
each token one by one. Scanners are usually implemented to produce
tokens only when requested by a parser. Here is how this works-
1. "Get next token" is a command which is sent from the parser to the
lexical analyzer.
2. On receiving this command, the lexical analyzer scans the input until
it finds the next token.
3. It returns the token to Parser.
Lexical Analyzer skips whitespaces and comments while creating these
tokens. If any error is present, then Lexical analyzer will correlate that error
with the source file and line number.
Roles of the Lexical analyzer
Lexical analyzer performs below given tasks:
Helps to identify token into the symbol table
Removes white spaces and comments from the source program
Correlates error messages with the source program
Helps you to expands the macros if it is found in the source program
Read input characters from the source program
Example of Lexical Analysis, Tokens, Non-Tokens
Consider the following code that is fed to Lexical Analyzer
#include <stdio.h>
int maximum(int x, int y) {
// This will compare 2 numbers
if (x > y)
return x;
else {
return y;
}
}
Examples of Tokens created
Lexeme Token
int Keyword
maximum Identifier
( Operator
int Keyword
x Identifier
, Operator
int Keyword
Y Identifier
) Operator
{ Operator
If Keyword
Examples of Nontokens
Type Examples
Comment // This will compare 2 numbers
Pre-processor directive #include <stdio.h>
Pre-processor directive #define NUMS 8,9
Macro NUMS
Whitespace /n /b /t
Lexical Errors
A character sequence which is not possible to scan into any valid token is a
lexical error. Important facts about the lexical error:
Lexical errors are not very common, but it should be managed by a
scanner
Misspelling of identifiers, operators, keyword are considered as
lexical errors
Generally, a lexical error is caused by the appearance of some illegal
character, mostly at the beginning of a token.
Error Recovery in Lexical Analyzer
Here, are a few most common error recovery techniques:
Removes one character from the remaining input
In the panic mode, the successive characters are always ignored until
we reach a well-formed token
By inserting the missing character into the remaining input
Replace a character with another character
Transpose two serial characters
Lexical Analyzer vs. Parser
Lexical Analyser Parser
Scan Input program Perform syntax analysis
Identify Tokens Create an abstract representation of the code
Insert tokens into Symbol Table Update symbol table entries
It generates lexical errors It generates a parse tree of the source code
Why separate Lexical and Parser?
The simplicity of design: It eases the process of lexical analysis and
the syntax analysis by eliminating unwanted tokens
To improve compiler efficiency: Helps you to improve compiler
efficiency
Specialization: specialized techniques can be applied to improves the
lexical analysis process
Portability: only the scanner requires to communicate with the outside
world
Higher portability: input-device-specific peculiarities restricted to the
lexer
Advantages of Lexical analysis
Lexical analyzer method is used by programs like compilers which
can use the parsed data from a programmer's code to create a
compiled binary executable code
It is used by web browsers to format and display a web page with the
help of parsed data from JavsScript, HTML, CSS
A separate lexical analyzer helps you to construct a specialized and
potentially more efficient processor for the task
Disadvantage of Lexical analysis
You need to spend significant time reading the source program and
partitioning it in the form of tokens
Some regular expressions are quite difficult to understand compared
to PEG or EBNF rules
More effort is needed to develop and debug the lexer and its token
descriptions
Additional runtime overhead is required to generate the lexer tables
and construct the tokens
Summary
Lexical analysis is the very first phase in the compiler designing
A lexeme is a sequence of characters that are included in the source
program according to the matching pattern of a token
Lexical analyzer is implemented to scan the entire source code of the
program
Lexical analyzer helps to identify token into the symbol table
A character sequence which is not possible to scan into any valid
token is a lexical error
Removes one character from the remaining input is useful Error
recovery method
Lexical Analyser scan the input program while parser perform syntax
analysis
It eases the process of lexical analysis and the syntax analysis by
eliminating unwanted tokens
Lexical analyzer is used by web browsers to format and display a
web page with the help of parsed data from JavsScript, HTML, CSS
The biggest drawback of using Lexical analyzer is that it needs
additional runtime overhead is required to generate the lexer tables
and construct the tokens
