Symbol Table Operations

There are two main operations on symbol tables: (1) Insert (or Enter ) and (2) Lookup (or Retrieval.)

Most languages require declaration of names. When the declaration is processed, the name is inserted into the symbol table. For languages not requiring declarations, e.g., FORTRAN and SNOBOL, a name is inserted into the symbol table on its first use in the program. Each subsequent use of a name causes a symbol table lookup operation.

Given the characters of a name, searching finds the attributes associated with that name. The search time depends on the data structure used to represent the symbol table.