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From: compilers@ima.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.compilers
Subject: Re: Attribute Grammars used in compi
Message-ID: <136300057@ima.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Jan-86 22:02:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ima.136300057
Posted: Tue Jan 14 22:02:00 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Jan-86 01:32:15 EST
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Nf-From: ima!compilers    Jan 14 22:02:00 1986


[from jrp@nplmg1a.UUCP (John Pavel)]

Organization: National Physical Laboratory,Teddington,UK.

In article <136300029@ima.UUCP> compilers@ima.UUCP writes:
>I'm interested in finding people that have used attribute grammars to
>aid the development of a real live compiler. 

We at the Protocol Standards Group at NPL have been using attribute
grammars to facilitate the decoding of protocol data units, and also in
the construction of several simple language parsing front-ends.

We have used two main tools (apart from yacc which uses a bodged
attribute grammar of sorts).  The first is GAG from the University of
Karlsruhe [Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol 141]; this is a large
and fairly impressive set of tools written in just about ISO standard
Pascal, producing ISO Pascal front-ends.  People have been using this
for building Ada compilers and (I am informed) Ada to COBOL tranlators!

The other is Prolog, which is good for trying out ideas, but probably
not a practical construction tool.

One of the best texts I know on attribute grammars is Waite/Goos:
"Compiler Construction" from Springer-Verlag.