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The Modeling of a Programming Language Syntax Based on Positional Entropy

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Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management (CISIM 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11703))

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Abstract

This paper presents the method of modeling the syntax of a programming language that can be used to design a new language. The purpose of this method is to create a syntax adapted to faster implementation and to embrace a larger class of algorithms. The method can also improve the readability of the source code by programmer. The article also presents the new interpretation of the concept of entropy and complexity, which is applicable in computer science. In experiments many examples of source codes were used, for which the complexity was examined, and then the syntax was optimized according to preset syntactic features (e.g. number of tokens or lines, characteristic tokens, length of tokens etc.). The source code comes down to a structure for which the complexity of its subpart can be explored. Some subparts are modified by reducing or increasing complexity. At the stage of modifying the code the syntactic features determine the change in complexity. The optimization was multi-stage and partly performed by human, to check at each stage whether the modified code obtained the expected syntactic structure. The proposed method is universal and suitable for modeling a new syntax based on existing and modern imperative languages. During syntax modeling, only the syntactical structure of the algorithm changes, not what the algorithm has to do. With an appropriate choice of syntactic features, a completely new language can be designed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, University of Silesia, Będzińska 39, 41-205, Sosnowiec, Poland

    Marcin Cholewa

Authors
  1. Marcin Cholewa
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Correspondence to Marcin Cholewa .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bialystok University of Technology, Bialystok, Poland

    Khalid Saeed

  2. University of Calcutta, Calcutta, India

    Rituparna Chaki

  3. Mihajlo Pupin Institute, Belgrade, Serbia

    Valentina Janev

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Cholewa, M. (2019). The Modeling of a Programming Language Syntax Based on Positional Entropy. In: Saeed, K., Chaki, R., Janev, V. (eds) Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management. CISIM 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11703. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28957-7_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28957-7_33

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28956-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-28957-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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