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Profile-Based Abstraction and Analysis of Attribute Grammar Evaluation

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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

Attribute grammars enable complex algorithms to be defined on tree and graph structures by declarative equations. An understanding of how the equations cooperate is necessary to gain a proper understanding of an algorithm defined by an attribute grammar. Existing attribute grammar tools and libraries provide little assistance with understanding the behaviour of an attribute evaluator. To do better, we need a way to summarise behaviour in terms of attributes, their values, their relationships, and the structures that are being attributed. A simple approach to program profiling is presented that models program execution as a hierarchy of domain-specific profile records. An abstract event for attribute evaluation is defined and evaluators are modified to collect event instances at run-time and assemble the model. A flexible report writer summarises the event instances along both intrinsic and derived dimensions, including ones defined by the developer. Selecting appropriate dimensions produces reports that expose complex properties of evaluator behaviour in a convenient way. The approach is illustrated and evaluated using the profiler we have built for the Kiama language processing library. We show that the method is both useful and practical.

Matt Roberts, Nikki Lesley and Suzana Andova provided helpful feedback on this work. Much of the project was performed while the author was a guest of Mark van den Brand’s group at TU Eindhoven. The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Anthony M. Sloane

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  1. Anthony M. Sloane
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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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Sloane, A.M. (2013). Profile-Based Abstraction and Analysis of Attribute Grammar Evaluation. 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_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36089-3_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36088-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36089-3

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