Editing Code generation (compiler) (section)

===Reflection===
In general, a syntax and semantic analyzer tries to retrieve the structure of the program from the source code, while a code generator uses this structural information (e.g., [[data type]]s) to produce code. In other words, the former ''adds'' information while the latter ''loses'' some of the information. One consequence of this information loss is that [[Reflection (computer science)|reflection]] becomes difficult or even impossible. To counter this problem, code generators often embed syntactic and semantic information in addition to the code necessary for execution.