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Modular Well-Definedness Analysis for Attribute Grammars

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Software Language Engineering (SLE 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 7745))

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Abstract

We present a modular well-definedness analysis for attribute grammars. The global properties of completeness and non-circularity are ensured with checks on grammar modules that require only additional information from their dependencies. Local checks to ensure global properties are crucial for specifying extensible languages. They allow independent developers of language extensions to verify that their extension, when combined with other independently developed and similarly verified extensions to a specified host language, will result in a composed grammar that is well-defined. Thus, the composition of the host language and user-selected extensions can safely be performed by someone with no expertise in language design and implementation. The analysis is necessarily conservative and imposes some restrictions on the grammar. We argue that the analysis is practical and the restrictions are natural and not burdensome by applying it to the Silver specifications of Silver, our boot-strapped extensible attribute grammar system.

This work is partially supported by NSF Awards No. 0905581 and 1047961.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Ted Kaminski & Eric Van Wyk

Authors
  1. Ted Kaminski
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  2. Eric Van Wyk
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave. West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Krzysztof Czarnecki

  2. Department of Computer Science, Lund University, Box 118, 221 00, Lund, Sweden

    Görel Hedin

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Kaminski, T., Van Wyk, E. (2013). Modular Well-Definedness Analysis for Attribute Grammars. In: Czarnecki, K., Hedin, G. (eds) Software Language Engineering. SLE 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7745. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36089-3_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36089-3_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36088-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36089-3

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