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Preserving Lexical Scoping When Dynamically Embedding Languages

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Programming Languages (SBLP 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9325))

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Abstract

There are various situations in which one may want to embed source code from one language into another, for example when combining relational query languages with application code or when performing staged meta-programming. Typically, one will want to transfer data between these languages. We propose an approach in which the embedded code shares variables with the host language, preserving lexical scoping rules even after the code is converted into an intermediate representation. We demonstrate this approach through a module for meta-programming using Lua as both embedded and host languages. Our technique supports dynamically generated code, requires no special annotation of functions to be translated and is implemented as a library, requiring no source pre-processing or changes to the host language execution environment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that in C# parlance, lambda expression is a more general term that can refer to both single-expression anonymous functions called expression lambdas and multi-statement functions called statement lambdas. Conversion to expression trees is only supported for expression lambdas.

  2. 2.

    The semantics of Lua Core in [4] is based on an environment \(\varSigma =(\varGamma ,S,F)\) where F is specific to Terra functions. In our presentation, we removed F. Rules reused from [4] were adapted accordingly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Félix Ribeiro, Hisham Muhammad, André Murbach Maidl & Roberto Ierusalimschy

Authors
  1. Félix Ribeiro
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  2. Hisham Muhammad
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  3. André Murbach Maidl
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  4. Roberto Ierusalimschy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Félix Ribeiro .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de La Republica, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Alberto Pardo

  2. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    S. Doaitse Swierstra

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Ribeiro, F., Muhammad, H., Maidl, A.M., Ierusalimschy, R. (2015). Preserving Lexical Scoping When Dynamically Embedding Languages. In: Pardo, A., Swierstra, S. (eds) Programming Languages. SBLP 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9325. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24012-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24012-1_3

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