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Pragmatic Aspects of Reusable Program Generators Position Paper

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Semantics, Applications, and Implementation of Program Generation (SAIG 2000)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1924))

Abstract

When writing a program generator requires considerable intellectual effort,it is pleasant to amortize that effort by using the generator to build more than one application. When a program generator serves multiple clients,however, the implementor must address pragmatic questions that implementors of single-use program generators can ignore. In how many languages should generated code be written? How should code be packaged? What should the interfaces to the client code look like? How should a user control variations? This paper uses exam- ples from SLED, λ-RTL, and ASDL to elaborate on these questions. It is hoped that the paper will stimulate discussion and the development of better techniques. Most urgently needed is a simple, clear way to control interfaces to generated code.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, USA

    Norman Ramsey

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  1. Norman Ramsey
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science Eklandagatan 86, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Walid Taha

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Ramsey, N. (2000). Pragmatic Aspects of Reusable Program Generators Position Paper. In: Taha, W. (eds) Semantics, Applications, and Implementation of Program Generation. SAIG 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1924. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45350-4_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45350-4_12

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-41054-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45350-5

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