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An Abstract, Reusable, and Extensible Programming Language Design Architecture

  • Chapter
In Search of Elegance in the Theory and Practice of Computation

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8000))

Abstract

There are a few basic computational concepts that are at the core of all programming languages. The exact elements making out such a set of concepts determine (1) the specific nature of the computational services such a language is designed for, (2) for what users it is intended, and (3) on what devices and in what environment it is to be used. It is therefore possible to propose a set of basic building blocks and operations thereon as combination procedures to enable programming software by specifying desired tasks using a tool-box of generic constructs and meta-operations. Syntax specified through LALR(k) grammar technology can be enhanced with greater recognizing power thanks to a simple augmentation of yacc technology. Upon this basis, a set of implementable formal operational semantics constructs may be simply designed and generated (syntax and semantics) à la carte, by simple combination of its desired features. The work presented here, and the tools derived from it, may be viewed as a tool box for generating language implementations with a desired set of features. It eases the automatic practical generation of programming language pioneered by Peter Landin’s SECD Machine. What is overviewed constitutes a practical computational algebra extending the polymorphically typed λ-Calculus with object/classes and monoid comprehensions. This paper describes a few of the most salient parts of such a system, stressing most specifically any innovative features—formal syntax and semantics. It may be viewed as a high-level tour of a few reusable programming language design techniques prototyped in the form of a set of composable abstract machine constructs and operations.

Thanks to Val Tannen for his patience, Nabil Layaïda for his comments, and the anonymous referee for catching many glitches and giving good advice in general.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France

    Hassan Aït-Kaci

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  1. Hassan Aït-Kaci
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, 3330 Walnut St., 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Val Tannen

  2. School of Computing, National University of Singapore, 13 Computing Drive, 117417, Singapore, Singapore

    Limsoon Wong

  3. School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, EH8 9AB, Edinburgh, UK

    Leonid Libkin , Wenfei Fan  & Michael Fourman ,  & 

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of California, 1156 High Street, 95064, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Wang-Chiew Tan

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Aït-Kaci, H. (2013). An Abstract, Reusable, and Extensible Programming Language Design Architecture. In: Tannen, V., Wong, L., Libkin, L., Fan, W., Tan, WC., Fourman, M. (eds) In Search of Elegance in the Theory and Practice of Computation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8000. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41660-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41660-6_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

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