Abstract
This paper reports the relationship between formal description of semantics (i.e., interpreter) of a programming language and an actual compiler. The paper also describes a method to automatically generate an actual compiler from a formal description which is, in some sense, the partial evaluation of a computation process. The compiler-compiler inspired by this method differs from conventional ones in that the compiler-compiler based on our method can describe an evaluation procedure (interpreter) in defining the semantics of a programming language, while the conventional one describes a translation process.
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Futamura, Y. Partial Evaluation of Computation Process--An Approach to a Compiler-Compiler. Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation 12, 381–391 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010095604496
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010095604496