BORANA UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF NATURAL AND COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

COURSE TITLE: COMPILER DESIGN

CHAPTER FIVE (5) TYPE CHECKING

BY DAWIT H.
By: D. Nanne H. 2023/24
 Type Checking

• Type checking is the process of verifying and enforcing constraints of types in values.
• A compiler must check if the source program follows the syntactic and semantic
conventions of the source language.
• Type checking allows the programmer to limit what types may be used in certain
circumstances and assigns types to values.
• The type-checker determines whether these values are used appropriately or not.
• It checks the type of objects and reports a type error in the case of a violation, and
incorrect types are corrected.

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 Cont…

• Whatever the compiler we use, while the compiler is compiling the

program, it has to check and follow the type rules of the language.
• Every language has its own set of type rules for the language.
• But, We know that the information about data types like INTEGER,
CHARACTER, FLOAT, and etc., are maintained and computed by the
compiler.

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• The compiler contains modules, where the type checker is a module of a compiler and its task is
type checking.
Tasks:
• has to allow “Indexing is only on an array”
• has to check the range of data types used
• INTEGER (int) has a range of -32,768 to +32767
• FLOAT has a range of 1.2E-38 to 3.4E+38.

By: D. Nanne H.
 Types of Type Checking
• There are two kinds of Semantic Checks or type checking:
• i. Static Type Checking.
• ii. Dynamic Type Checking.
• i. Static Type Checking:
• Here, checking is done by a compiler at compile time.
• It checks the type variables, i.e., type of the variable is known at the compile time.
• It examines the program text during the translation of the program.
• also used to determine the amount of memory needed to store the variable
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 Cont...
Static checks include:
• Type-checks: A compiler should report an error if an operator is applied to an incompatible operand.
• Example: an error occurs if array variable is added with ‘function variable int a, c[10], d; d=c+d;//error
• flow of control checks: Statements that cause the flow of control to leave a construct must have
someplace to transfer the flow of control.
• Example: an error occurs when an enclosing statement such as ‘break’ does not exist in switch statements
• Uniqueness checks: There are situations in which an object must be defined only once.
• Example: int i, j, i;//error add( int a, int a){}//error

By: D. Nanne H.
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The Benefits of Static Type Checking:

• Runtime Error Protection.
• It catches syntactic errors like spurious words or extra punctuation.
• Detects incorrect argument types.
• It catches the wrong number of arguments.
• It catches wrong return types, like return “70”, from a function that’s
declared to return an int.
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 Cont…

• ii. Dynamic Type Checking:

• here type checking is done at run time, when the target program runs
• Here, types are associated with values, not with variables.
• Dynamic type checking is more flexible.
• A static type system always restricts what can be conveniently expressed.
• Programming with a static type system often requires more design and
implementation effort.
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 Cont…

• Languages like Pascal, C and C++ have static type checking.

• Type checking is one of the semantic checking operations.
• –we may not do all type checking at compile-time. –Some systems also
use dynamic type checking too.
• The main purpose of type-checking is to check the correctness, data type
assignments and type-casting of the data types in a program, whether it is
syntactically correct or not before their execution.

By: D. Nanne H.
 Type systems

• Type system is a collection of rules implemented by the type checker for assigning
type expressions to the parts of a program.
• Different compilers may use different type systems for the same language
• A type checker implements a type system.
The design of the type-checker depends on:
• Syntactic Structure of language constructs.
• The Expressions of languages.
• The rules for assigning types to constructs (semantic rules).
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• The Position of the Type checker in the Compiler:-

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 Cont…

Description of this Type checking position in Compiler:-

• The token streams from the lexical analyzer are passed to the PARSER.
• The PARSER will generate a syntax tree.
• When a program (source code) is converted into a syntax tree, the type-checker plays a Crucial Role.
• So, by seeing the syntax tree, you can tell whether each data type is handling the correct variable or
not.
• The Type-Checker will check and if any modifications are present, then it will modify.
• It produces a syntax tree, and after that, INTERMEDIATE CODE Generation is done
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 Cont…

• Type checking is carried out in semantic phase, and its information is

added to semantic rules
• The type information produced by the type checker may be needed when
the code is generated.
• It is especially important for overloaded and polymorphic functions

By: D. Nanne H.
 Type Expressions

• Types have structure, which we shall represent using type expressions

• Type expression: is the idea of associating each language construct with an
expression describing its type.
• The type of a language construct (like tokens) will be denoted by a type
expression
• A type expressions are defined inductively from a basic type or from constants
using type constructor (which are formed by applying an operator)
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• A type expressions can be:

1. A basic type: is a primitive data type such as integer, real, char, Boolean, … are a
type expression
• A special basic type, type-error will signal a type error during type checking
• void: denote “ the absence of a value” allows statements to be checked
2. A type name: a name can be used to denote a type expression
3. Type expression may contain variables whose values are type expressions
4. A type constructor applied to other type expression is a type expression.
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• A type constructor include

• a. Arrays. If I is int index set and T is a type expression, then array (I, T) is a
type expression;
• denoting the type of an array with elements in T and indices in the range 0 ... n -
1.
• Ex: An array type int[2] can be read as array(2, integer).

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 Cont…

• b. Products. If T1 and T2 are type expressions, the Cartesian product T1 x

T2 is a type expression, x, is left associative. Ex: int x int
• c. Pointers. If T is a type expression then pointer(T) is a type expression
denoting the type pointer to an object of type T.
• Ex: pointer (int)

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• d. Functions. a functions in a programming language has a form of

mapping from a domain type D to a range type R.
• So, the type of such function is denoted by type expression D→R, where,
D is TE of the parameters and R is the TE of the returned value
• Ex: int→int represents the type of a function which takes an int value as
parameter, and its return type is also int.

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• e. Record is a data structure with named fields.

• A type expression can be formed by applying the record type constructor
to the field names and their types.
• Record types can be implemented by applying the constructor record to a
symbol table containing entries for the fields.

By: D. Nanne H.
 Specifications of a type checker

• In this section, we specify a type checker for a simple language, in which

the type of each identifier must be declared before the identifier is used.
• The type checker is a translation scheme that synthesizes the type of each
expression from the types of its sub expressions.
• The type declaration with list of names can be done using simplified
grammar that declares just one name at a time.
• The type checker can handle arrays, pointers, statements, and functions.
By: D. Nanne H.
 Equivalence of types

• Many type-checking rules have the form; "If two type expressions are
equal then return a certain type else return type error."
• Ambiguities arise when names are given to two type expressions, and the
names are used in subsequent expressions.
• Type equivalence that implemented by a compiler can be explained using
the concepts of structural and name equivalence.

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 Cont…

• a. Structural Equivalence of Type Expressions:-

• If a type expressions built from basic types and constructors, then the equivalence
between two type expressions is structural equivalence.
• Two type expressions are said to be structurally equivalent if and only if one of the
following conditions hold:
• They are built from the same basic type or they are identical,
• They are formed by applying the same constructor to structurally equivalent type
• One is a type name that denotes the other.
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• For example, the type expression integer is equivalent only to integer

because they are the same basic type.
• Similarly, pointer (integer) is equivalent only to pointer (integer) because
the two are formed by applying the same constructor pointer to equivalent
types.

By: D. Nanne H.
 Cont…

b. Name equivalence
• In some programming languages, we give a name to a type expression, and we use that
name as a type expression afterwards.
• Two type expressions are name equivalent if and only if they are identical.
• In structural equivalence, names are replaced by type expressions that they define,
• So two type expressions are structurally equivalent if they represent two structurally
equivalent type expressions when all names have been substituted.
• Example1: ptr and pointer (integer) are not name equivalent but they are structurally
equivalent.
By: D. Nanne H.
 Type Conversions

• In type conversion, a data type is automatically converted into another

data type by a compiler at the compiler time.
• Type conversion can only be applied to compatible data types.
• Example: int x=30; float y; y=x; // y==30.000000.
Consider expressions:
• x + i; Where x is of type real and i of type integer

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• Of course, the machine cannot execute this operation as it involves different types of
values
• However, most languages accept such expressions to be used;
• The compiler will be in charge of converting one of the operand into the type of the
other.
• The type checker can be used to insert these conversion operations into the
intermediate representation of the source program
• For example, an operator inttoreal may be inserted whenever an operand need to
implicitly converted
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Coercion
• Conversion from one type to another type is known as implicit if it is to be done
automatically by the compiler.
• Implicit-type conversions are also called Coercion and coercion is limited in many
languages.
• Example: An integer may be converted to a real but real is not converted to an integer.
• Conversion is said to be Explicit if the programmer writes something to do the
Conversion.

By: D. Nanne H.
 THANKS!
By: D. Nanne H.