Computer Science Technical Report Compiling Java to SUIF: Incorporating Support for Object-Oriented Languages Sumith Mathew, Eric Dahlman and Sandeep Gupta Computer Science Department Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523 g fmathew, dahlman, gupta @cs.colostate.edu July 1997 Technical Report CS-97-114 Computer Science Department Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523-1873 Phone: (970) 491-5792 Fax: (970) 491-2466 WWW: http://www.cs.colostate.edu Compiling Java to SUIF: Incorp orating Supp ort for Ob ject-Oriented Languages Sumith Mathew, Eric Dahlman and Sandeep Gupta Computer Science Department Colorado State University,Fort Collins, CO 80523 fmathew, dahlman,
[email protected] Abstract A primary ob jective in the SUIF compiler design has b een to develop an infrastructure for research in a variety of compiler topics including optimizations on ob ject-oriented languages. However, the task of optimizing ob ject-oriented languages requires that high- level ob ject constructs b e visible in SUIF. Java is a statically-typ ed, ob ject-oriented and interpreted language that has the same requirements of high-p erformance as pro cedural languages. Wehave develop ed a Java front-end to SUIF, j2s, for the purp ose of carrying out optimizations. This pap er discusses the compilation issues in translating Java to SUIF and draws up on those exp eriences in prop osing the solutions to incorp orating ob ject-oriented supp ort in SUIF as well as the extensions that need to be made to supp ort exceptions and threads. 1 Intro duction Ob ject-oriented languages with their features of inheritance and abstraction equip programmers with the to ols to write reusable programs quickly and easily.