Names, Bindings, and

Scopes
Programming Languages
Chapter 4 Part 1
 Introduction
 Imperative PLs are, to varying degrees, abstractions of
the underlying von Neumann computer architecture.
 The architecture’s two primary components are its

memory, which stores both instructions and data, and

its processor, which provides operations for modifying
the contents of the memory.
 The abstractions in a language for the memory cells of

the machine are variables.

 A variable can be characterized by a collection of

properties, or attributes, the most important of which is

type, a fundamental concept in PLs.

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 Cont…
 Designing the data types of a language requires that a
variety of issues be considered.
 Among the most important of these issues are the scope

and lifetime of variables.

 Functional PLs allow expressions to be named. These

named expressions appear like assignments to variable

names in imperative languages, but are fundamentally
different in that they cannot be changed.
 Pure functional languages do not have variables that

are like those of the imperative languages. However,

many functional languages do include such variables.

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 Names
 Names are also associated with subprograms, formal
parameters, and other program constructs.
 The term identifier is often used interchangeably with

name.

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 Design Issues
 The following are the primary design issues for
names:

Are names case sensitive?

 Are the special words of the language reserved

words or keywords?

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 Name Forms
 A name is a string of characters used to identify some
entity in a program.
 Names in most PLs have the same form: a letter

followed by a string consisting of letters, digits, and

underscore characters ( _ ).
 In many languages, notably the C-based languages,

uppercase and lowercase letters in names are distinct;

that is, names in these languages are case sensitive.

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 Special Words
 Special words in PLs are used to make programs more
readable by naming actions to be performed.
 They also are used to separate the syntactic parts of

statements and programs.

 In most languages, special words are classified as

reserved words, which means they cannot be redefined

by programmers, but in some they are only keywords,
which means they can be redefined.
 A keyword is a word of a programming language that

is special only in certain contexts.

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 Cont…
 A reserved word is a special word of a PL that cannot
be used as a name.
 As a language design choice, reserved words are better

than keywords because the ability to redefine keywords

can be confusing.
 There is one potential problem with reserved words: If

the language includes a large number of reserved

words, the user may have difficulty making up names
that are not reserved.

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 Variables
 A program variable is an abstraction of a computer
memory cell or collection of cells.
 Programmers often think of variable names as names

for memory locations, but there is much more to a

variable than just a name.
 The move from machine languages to assembly

languages was largely one of replacing absolute

numeric memory addresses for data with names,
making programs far more readable and therefore
easier to write and maintain.

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 Cont…
 That step also provided an escape from the problem of
manual absolute addressing, b/c the translator that
converted the names to actual addresses also chose
those addresses.

 A variable can be characterized as a sextuple of

attributes: (name, address, value, type, lifetime, and
scope).

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 Name
 Variable names are the most common names in
programs.
 Most variables have names.

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 Address

 The address of a variable is the machine memory address

with which it is associated.
 In many languages, it is possible for the same variable
to be associated with different addresses at different
times in the program.
 For example, if a subprogram has a local variable that

is allocated from the run-time stack when the

subprogram is called, different calls may result in that
variable having different addresses.

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 Cont…
 The address of a variable is sometimes called its l-
value, because the address is what is required when the
name of a variable appears in the left side of an
assignment.
 It is possible to have multiple variables that have the

same address.
 When more than one variable name can be used to

access the same memory location, the variables are

called aliases.
 Aliasing is a hindrance to readability because it allows

a variable to have its value changed by an assignment

to a different variable.
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 Type
 The type of a variable determines the range of values
the variable can store and the set of operations that are
defined for values of the type.

 For example, the int type in Java specifies a value

range of -2147483648 to 2147483647 and arithmetic
operations for addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division, and modulus.

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 Value
 The value of a variable is the contents of the memory
cell or cells associated with the variable.
 It is convenient to think of computer memory in terms

of abstract cells, rather than physical cells.

 The physical cells, or individually addressable units, of

most contemporary computer memories are byte-size,

with a byte usually being eight bits in length.
 This size is too small for most program variables. An

abstract memory cell has the size required by the

variable with which it is associated.

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Names, Bindings and Scopes

 A name is a mnemonic character string representing

something else:
• x, func1, f, prog1, null are names
• 1, 2, 3 are not names
• +, <=, . . . may be names if they are not built-in operators

 Design issues for identifiers (names)

• Does the language have a maximum length?

-most languages either have no restriction or the
restriction is large enough to be immaterial
(e.g., 31 in C and Pascal, 30 in COBOL)
• Does the language have legal connectors?
-most languages use _ or “camel” notation
-COBOL uses – (hyphen) detracting from
readability

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 • Are letters case sensitive?
-this can detract from readability and
writability or both
• Are the special words of the language context
sensitive (key words) or reserved?

A variable (identifier) has six attributes

 Name
 Address
 Type
 Representation (value
 Scope
 Lifetime

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 Name
• can be one-one, many-one, none-one mapping to
memory
 Address
• Point to a location in memory
• Can vary dynamically
• Two names for the same address = aliasing
 Type
• Range of values + legal operations
 representation/value
• Interpreted content of the location
• L-value (address)
• R-value (content/value)

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Binding
 A binding is an association between two

entities:
• Name and memory location (for variables)
• Name and function
 Typically a binding is between a name and
the object it refers to.
 The scope of a binding is the region of a

program or time interval(s) in the program’s

execution during which the binding is active.
 A scope is a maximal region of the program

where no bindings are destroyed (e.g., body

of a procedure).

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Possible binding times
 Language design time

• bind operator symbols to operations

 Language implementation time
• Bind floating point type to a representation
 Compile time
• Map high-level language constructs to machine code
• Layout static data in memory
 Link time
• Resolve references between separately compiled modules
 Load time
• Assign machine addresses to static data
 Run time
• Bind values to variables
• Allocate dynamic data and assign to variables
• Allocate local variables of procedures on the stack

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 Static and Dynamic binding

 A binding is static if it occurs before runtime

and remains unchanged throughout
program execution
 A binding is dynamic if it occurs during

execution or can change during execution

 The binding times of various attributes is an

important characteristic of a language

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 Example: count = count + 5;

• The type of count is bound at compile time.

• The set of possible values of count is bound

at compiler design time.

• The meaning of the operator + is bound at
compile time, when the types of its
operands
have been determined.
• The internal representation of the literal 5 is
bound at compiler design time.
• The value of count is bound at execution
time with this statement.
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 Importance of Binding Time

 Early binding
• Faster code
• Typical in compiled languages
 Late binding
• Greater flexibility
• Typical in interpreted languages

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 Storage Bindings and Lifetime

• Allocation is the process of acquiring a

memory cell or calls from a pool of
available
memory.
• Deallocation is the process of returning an
unbound memory cell or cell back to the
pool
of available memory.
• The lifetime of a variable is the time that a
variable is bound to a specific memory
location.
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Object and Binding Lifetime

 Object lifetime
• Period between the creation and destruction of the object
• Example: time between creation and destruction of a
dynamically allocated variable in C++ using new and
delete
 Binding lifetime
• Period between the creation and destruction of the
binding (name-to-object association)

 Two common mistakes

• Dangling reference: no object for a binding (e.g., a pointer
refers to an object that has already been deleted)
• Memory leak: no binding for an object (preventing the
object from being deallocated)

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Storage Allocation
An object’s lifetime corresponds to the mechanism
used to manage the space where the object resides.
 Static object

• Object stored at a fixed absolute address

• Object’s lifetime spans the whole execution of the
program.
 Object on stack
• Object allocated on stack in connection with a subroutine
call
• Object’s lifetime spans period between invocation of the
subroutine and return from the subroutine.
 Object on heap
• Object stored on heap
• Object created/destroyed at arbitrary times
– Explicitly by programmer or
– Implicitly by garbage collector
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