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International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods

SEFM 2022: Software Engineering and Formal Methods pp 57–73Cite as

A Query Language for Language Analysis

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS,volume 13550)

Abstract

Language analysis aims at establishing properties of languages, which provides strong guarantees on the behavior of every program written in such languages. Tools that automate language analysis often need to browse a language definition given as input and retrieve information from grammars, typing rules, reduction rules, and other components of the language.

In this paper, we propose a languages-as-databases approach where language definitions are stored as database tables. Our main contribution is \(\textsc {Lang-Sql}\), a SQL-inspired query language that can express queries over languages. The key characteristic of \(\textsc {Lang-Sql}\) is that it contains linguistic features that are specific to query operational semantics aspects.

To demonstrate that \(\textsc {Lang-Sql}\) can be used in practical applications, we have used \(\textsc {Lang-Sql}\) queries to rewrite the majority of \(\textsc {Lang-n-Check}\), a tool that analyzes languages and establishes their type soundness. Our queries are declarative, and concisely express complicated operations.

Keywords

  • Language analysis
  • Type soundness
  • SQL

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA, 01854, USA

    Matteo Cimini

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  1. Matteo Cimini
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Correspondence to Matteo Cimini .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Bernd-Holger Schlingloff

  2. Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China

    Ming Chai

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Cimini, M. (2022). A Query Language for Language Analysis. In: Schlingloff, BH., Chai, M. (eds) Software Engineering and Formal Methods. SEFM 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13550. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17108-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17108-6_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-17107-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-17108-6

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