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Expression of programming language semantics (AST & # 8594; ASG)

Do you have any pointers to information / research related to expressing a semantics language in the same way syntactic requirements are formalized using codified / markup (like EBNF)?

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There is a whole bunch of literature on this issue. Peter Moss has written a book called Action Semantics. Peter Lee and Andrew Appel both have doctoral theses on building a compiler from a formal description of semantics; I think Peter came out as a book.

The Bill Waite group in Colorado made a compiler compiler toolkit called Eli, which covered everything from lexing to parsing to semantics. Tom Reps worked on attribute grammars, among other things, the semantics of the language were applied. There was also some European work using attribute grammars, but I cannot remember acronyms or people.



Good finger dip spots may include

  • Don Knuth's original article on attribute grammars
  • Report by Peter Lee.
  • Eli
  • Maybe a book by Peter Moss, although I seem to remember, I found it heavy.
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Benjamin Pearce's book Types and Programming Languages is a good place to start. It uses "small steps operational semantics" as the official specification for programming languages.

Another good resource might be John Boyland's PhD Dissertation Topic .



He developed a system called APS that can generate an entire compiler using attribute grammars.

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