摘要:
A modular compilation system that utilizes a fully integrated hierarchical representation as a common intermediate representation to compile source code programs written in one or more procedural programming languages (201, 202) into an executable object code file. The structure of the integrated common intermediate representation supports machine-independent optimizations (203), as well as machine-dependent optimization (205), and also supports source-level debugging (212) of the executable object code file. The integrated hierarchical representation (IHR) is language independent and is shared by all of the components of the software development system, including the compiler (200) and the debugger (212).