Stages of compilation

Lexical analysis – Compiler only

·         All comments and white spaces are removed from the program.

·         High level code is turned into a series of tokens

·         The compiler picks out reserved words (if, else, for), operators, variables and constants.

·         Tokens are specified strings of characters and are stored into and ordered fashion

·         The complier needs to keep track of the variables and subroutines within the program. To do this it uses a symbol table. Names are added to the table during lexical analysis. Late on other info is added such as the data type and scope.

Syntax analysis

·         …