Theory and practice of compilation

Compilation is the translation of high level language programs into machine code. Correct translation can only be achieved if syntax and semantics of programming languages are clearly defined and strictly obeyed by compiler constructors. The author presents a simple extendable scheme for syntax and semantics to be defined rigorously. This scheme fits many programming languages, especially ALGOL-like ones. The author considers statements and programs to be notations of state transformations; in special cases storage state transformations. (5 refs).