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Bootstrapping Compiler Generators from Partial Evaluators

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Perspectives of Systems Informatics (PSI 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 7162))

Abstract

This paper shows that bootstrapping of compiler generators from program specializers is a viable alternative to the third Futamura projection. To practically validate the technique, a novel partial evaluation-based compiler generator was designed and implemented for a recursive flowchart language. Three-step bootstrapping was found to be faster and to produce the same compiler generator that Gomard and Jones produced two decades ago by double self-application. Compiler-generator bootstrapping has distinct properties that are not present in the classic three Futamura projections, such as the ability to turn a specializer into a compiler generator in one step without self-application. Up to now, the approach of hand-writing compiler generators has only been used to avoid difficulties when specializing strongly-typed languages, not as a first step towards compiler-generator bootstrapping.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. DIKU, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

    Robert Glück

Authors
  1. Robert Glück
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, 15213-3891, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Edmund Clarke

  2. A.P. Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 6, Acad. Lavrentiev ave, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

    Irina Virbitskaite

  3. The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK

    Andrei Voronkov

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Glück, R. (2012). Bootstrapping Compiler Generators from Partial Evaluators. In: Clarke, E., Virbitskaite, I., Voronkov, A. (eds) Perspectives of Systems Informatics. PSI 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7162. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29709-0_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29709-0_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-29708-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-29709-0

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