Tom Dinkelaker
Michael Eichberg
Mira Mezini
ABSTRACT
Embedded domain-specific languages (EDSLs) are known to improve the productivity of developers. However, for many domains no DSL implementation is available. Two important reasons are: First, the effort to implement embedded DSLs that provide the domain's established syntax (called concrete syntax) is very high. Second, the embedded DSL and its underlying general-purpose programming language (GPL) are typically tightly integrated which hampers reusability across different GPLs.
In this paper, we present an approach that significantly reduces the necessary effort to implement embedded DSLs with concrete syntax. The idea is to use island grammars to specify the EDSL's concrete syntax. This enables the developer to implement the embedded DSL as a library and to incrementally specify the concrete syntax using meta-data. Only those parts of the EDSL's grammar need to be specified that deviate from the grammar of the GPL and which is required to enable the integration with the GPL.
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Index Terms
- Incremental concrete syntax for embedded languages
Recommendations
Incremental concrete syntax for embedded languages with support for separate compilation
Embedded domain-specific languages (EDSLs) are known to improve the productivity of developers. However, for many domains no DSL implementation is available and two important reasons for this are: First, the effort to implement EDSLs that provide the ...
Concrete syntax for objects: domain-specific language embedding and assimilation without restrictions
OOPSLA '04Application programmer's interfaces give access to domain knowledge encapsulated in class libraries without providing the appropriate notation for expressing domain composition. Since object-oriented languages are designed for extensibility and reuse, ...
Concrete syntax for objects: domain-specific language embedding and assimilation without restrictions
OOPSLA '04: Proceedings of the 19th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applicationsApplication programmer's interfaces give access to domain knowledge encapsulated in class libraries without providing the appropriate notation for expressing domain composition. Since object-oriented languages are designed for extensibility and reuse, ...
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