An Automatic Generator for Compiler Testing

Abstract

A new method for testing compilers is presented. The compiler is exercized by compilable programs, automatically generated by a test generator. The generator is driven by a tabular description of the source language. This description is in a formalism which nicely extends context-free grammars in a context-dependent direction, but still retains the structure and readability of BNF. The generator produces a set of programs which cover all grammatical constructions of the source language, unless user supplied directives instruct otherwise. The programs generated can also be used to evaluate the performance of different compilers of the same source language.