2009-10-14

Post date: Oct 17, 2009 5:19:11 PM

Transforming high-level structured control flow into either conditional or unconditional jump in C, in a form that is closer to how assembly language does control flow.

• In C, we have goto for unconditional jump. The goto targets are labels, which is an identifier at the beginning of a line followed by a colon.
  • the_label:

• Conditional jump in C is simulated by an if statement with only a goto in the then-clause.
  • if (cond) goto label;
• Structured if's can be translated to conditional and unconditional jump like this.

Translating loops:

• While loop

• For loop like this:
  • for (initialize; cond; update) { /* for-body */ }
• is first translated into a while loop
  • initialize; while (cond) { /* for-body */ update; }
• Then it can be translated into goto like above.

Examples and exercises:

• Fibonacci, using while loop (see fib.c below) and using goto (fib-goto.c below).
• Factorial, using while loop (see factorial.c below). Exercise.
• Prime factorization, using for loop (see prime-factor.c below). Exercise.

(Note that their original location in my home directory has been removed.)