Composing Syntactical Constructs to Create Domain-Specific Languages
Creating a programming language is a considerable undertaking, even for relatively small domain-specific languages (DSLs). Most approaches to ease this task either limit the flexibility of the DSL or consider entire languages as the unit of composition. This paper presents a new approach using syntactical constructs (also called syncons) for defining DSLs in much smaller units of composition while retaining flexibility. A syntactical construct defines a single language feature, such as an if
statement or an anonymous function. Each syntactical construct is fully self-contained: it specifies its own concrete syntax, binding semantics, and runtime semantics, independently of the rest of the language. The runtime semantics are specified as a translation to a user defined target language, while the binding semantics allow name resolution before expansion. Additionally, we present a novel approach for dealing with syntactical ambiguity that arises when combining languages, even if the languages are individually unambiguous. The work is implemented and evaluated in a case study, where small subsets of OCaml and Lua have been defined and composed using syntactical constructs.
Tue 15 JanDisplayed time zone: Belfast change
14:00 - 15:30 | |||
14:00 30mTalk | Composing Syntactical Constructs to Create Domain-Specific Languages PADL DOI Media Attached | ||
14:30 30mTalk | Proof Carrying Plans PADL Christopher Schwaab University of St Andrews, Ekaterina Komendantskaya Heriot-Watt University, UK, Alasdair Hill , Frantisek Farka , Ron Petrick , Joe Wells , Kevin Hammond University of St. Andrews, UK | ||
15:00 30mTalk | A Combinatorial Testing Framework for Intuitionistic Propositional Theorem Provers PADL Paul Tarau University of North Texas |