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Incremental language design

Incremental language design

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Formal methods for describing programming language semantics are not widely used since they are not modular, extensible and reusable. In the paper, a new extensible and reusable approach for specifying programming languages with attribute grammars is presented. The concepts from object-oriented programming, templates and multiple inheritance, are integrated with attribute grammars. A template in attribute grammar is an abstraction of a semantic rule parameterised with attribute occurrences. Conversely, the whole attribute grammar is a subject of multiple inheritance and specialisation. With the proposed approach a language designer has the opportunity to design incrementally a language or reuse some fragments from other programming language specifications. Templates and multiple inheritance have been implemented in the compiler generator tool LISA version 2.0.

Inspec keywords: compiler generators; object-oriented programming; object-oriented languages; inheritance; attribute grammars; formal specification

Other keywords: LISA; templates; specialisation; semantic rule; reusable approach; formal specification; attribute grammars; formal methods; incremental language design; compiler generator tool; programming language semantics; object-oriented programming; multiple inheritance

Subjects: Object-oriented programming; Formal methods; High level languages

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