For Instructors¶

SLangCC exposes the major stages of a small native compiler and includes focused benchmark suites for lexer, parser, semantic, IR, code-generation, and integration behavior.

Suggested progression¶

Module	Repository evidence
Lexical analysis	lexer/lexer.l and benchmark/lexer/
Parsing and ASTs	parser/parser.y, parser/AST.md, and benchmark/parser/
Names and types	semantic_analyzer/ and benchmark/semantic/
Intermediate representation	SLangIR/ and benchmark/slangir/
Native code generation	codegen/ and benchmark/codegen/
End-to-end compilation	driver/, slangcc.cpp, and integration programs

Compiler-stage artifacts¶

Students can preserve every major representation without modifying the compiler:

./slangcc lesson.sl \
  --ast-dump \
  --ast-semantic-dump \
  --ir-dump \
  --asm-dump

This makes it practical to compare source constructs with the parser AST, semantic annotations, SLangIR, and x86-64 assembly.

Exercise ideas¶

• classify examples as lexer, parser, or semantic failures;
• compare ASTs before and after semantic analysis;
• trace a typed expression through SLangIR;
• explain the labels and branches generated for loops;
• compare iterative and recursive Fibonacci programs;
• extend one stage and add matching legal and illegal tests.

Reproducibility¶

Specify the exact SLangCC release or repository revision used by a course. The current prebuilt release is v0.1.0. Generated programs require x86-64 Linux plus GCC or Clang.