Compiler Design (CD) Viva Questions

VIVA QUESTIONS

01.  What is a translator?

02.  Differentiate interpreters and compilers.

03.  What are loaders and linkers?

04.  What is an assembler?

05.  What are the phases of a compiler?

06.  What is bootstrapping a compiler?

07.  What are the two parts of compilation? Explain briefly.

08.  Explain in brief linear analysis.

09.  Explain in brief hierarchical analysis.

10.  Explain in brief semantic analysis.

11.  Give the parse tree for the statement a := b + c * 60.

12.  What is a symbol table?

13.  Briefly explain code optimization.

14.  What are rational preprocessors?

15.  What is the use of scanner generator?

16.  What are the characteristics of a high-level programming language?

17.  What do you mean by syntax and semantics of a language?

18.  Give the hierarchy of programming elements.

19.  Explain in brief bookkeeping in compilation? 

20.  Give some four compiler-generator tools.

21.  Explain Macros.

22.  Explain in brief code generation phase.

23.  Explain in brief intermediate code generation phase.

24.  Mention the cousins of the compiler.

25.  What are the functions of a linker?

26.  What is an object program?

27.  Define a token.

28.  What is a preprocessor? 

29.  Give the format of a macro definition.

30.  What is the need of syntax analysis?

31.  What are the capabilities of CFG?

32.  Define regular expressions.

33.  Define a finite state automation.

34.  What is a transition diagram? Give example.

35.  What is a recognizer?

36.  What is CFG? Give example.

37.  What is a parse tree?

38.  Consider the grammar:
S --> (L)/a
L --> L,S/S
What are the terminals, non-terminals and start symbols?

39.  Differentiate NFA and DFA.

40.   What are the types of derivation?

41.   What is right-most derivation? Give example.

42.  What is left-most derivation? Give example.

43.  Explain canonical derivations.

44.  What is left-sentential form?

45.  What is right-sentential form?

46.  What is sentence of a grammar G?

47.  What is Context-Free Language?

48.  What is regular definition? Give example.

49.  What is a non-regular set?

50.  What is a Lexical analyzer?

51.  Write the algorithm for moving forward pointer in "input buffering" scheme. 

52.  What is the use of sentinels? 

53.  Distinguish tokens, patterns and lexemes.

54.  What are the lexical-error recovery actions? 

55.  What is the need for input buffering?

56.  Explain prefix and suffix of the string with example. 

57.  Explain proper prefix, proper suffix and proper substring with example.

58.  What is subsequence of a sting? 

59.  Draw the transition diagram for identifiers.

60.  What is the use of lexeme- beginning pointer and forward pointer?

61.  What is a parser?

62.  Write the role of parser.

63.  Mention the error recovery strategies of parser.

64.  What is ambiguity? Write the ways to eliminate ambiguity.

65.  What is Left recursion? Write the rules to eliminate left recursion.

66.  What is Left factoring? How do you eliminate it?

67.  What is parsing table?

68.  What is the use of LEX?

69.  What is a handle?

70.  What is handle pruning?

71.  What is a transition diagram? Give example? 

72.  What is the need for separating the parser from scanner?

73.  Translate the arithmetic expression a*-(b+c) into a syntax tree.

74.  Define a Quadruple. How it is different from Triples.

75.  What are Synthesized & Inherited Attributes?

76.  What do you mean by back patching? Why we are going for back patching.

77.  What are the three storage allocation strategies? Explain each in detail.

78.  Need for code optimization.

79.  What do you mean by Peep-hole optimization?

80.  Construct DAG for the following exp (a+b)-(e-(c+d)).

81.  Write the mnemonic code for (a+b)-(e-(c+d)).

82.  What do you mean by symbol table.Explain.

83.  What informations are stored in symbol table?

84.  Explain about static & stack allocation.

85.  What are the code optimization techniques?

86.  Explain about common sub exp elimination & renaming of temp variables.