Compilation - Part Two: Lexical Analysis

This is part two of a series of videos about compilation. Part two is about lexical analysis, also known as tokenization. It explains how the lexical analyser, otherwise known as the lexer, or the scanner, identifies the individual elements of a source program known as lexemes, which are then fed to the syntax analyser. It also mentions the symbol table as a repository for information about programmer defined names. The symbol table is used throughout the whole compilation process. As you will see when you watch this series, compilation involves a diverse range of themes in the field of computer science including high and low level programming paradigms, the definition of context free grammars, the application of dynamic data structures such as stacks, linked lists, hash tables, graphs and trees, memory management, processor architectures, and more. This series will give you an insight into some of the concepts and features that are typical of many compilers.

[LMinett]

From a teaching perspective, I cannot tell you how useful these videos are for pupil revision purposes

[NoctumusTV]

Thanks a lot for making these visually assisted audio books. I have already taken dozens of notes and screenshots, and they make it a true delight to learn about these rather technical topics.

[ilteriskutlukyildirim]

This channel is the best channel I encounter in youtube. Your videos and explanations are great and easy to understand. Thank you for your excellent effort

[eveninrose]

Love this series, thank you for sharing it!

[mmy]

If you had posted this series of videos in 2010, I could have passed my CS241 class the first shot and saved $1000.

[LeadingTheCheer]

love your videos, can you do videos on plc programming (sequential function charts, time functions, digital functions? :)

[SimGunther]

2:55 Nit in that some languages grab the entire quoted string "Freezing" as one token instead of having each double quote as separate tokens like in the video

[ohnocoder]

2:28 How did you determine that this is an identifier? It could have been something else.

[tko]

why did you give python as example although it is an intereperted language? or can it be compiled? 3:07

[annakarenina]

where did the 200 201 202 number come from? do we just number it randomly by ourself? please reply sir

[Spartan]

I don't think it was really a good idea to speak about a symbol table during the lexical analysis, since you (generally, most especially for simple understanding) shouldn't expect a lexer to require building the symbol table, transmit the symbol table, nor have use for the symbol table. (I feel like how you described a symbol table was incorrect since I was pretty certain symbols, or identifiers, are the relevant part of a symbol table, not the source strings) It also doesn't exactly make much sense for the lexer to be interested in quality analysis since its only purpose is to tokenize with simple token info, making scoping context irrelevant.