Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!ima!compilers-sender
From: cordy@QUCIS.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Pattern Languages
Message-ID: <2882@ima.ima.isc.com>
Date: 10 Nov 88 21:51:05 GMT
Sender: compilers-sender@ima.ima.isc.com
Reply-To: cordy@QUCIS.BITNET
Lines: 27
Approved: compilers@ima.UUCP

An implementation of the exact tool you ask for is described in:

        "TXL: A Rapid Prototyping System for Programming Language Dialects"
        by J.R. Cordy, C.D. Halpern and E. Promislow
        Proc. IEEE International Conference on Computer Languages, Miami, Octobe

TXL is a general purpose programming language extension tool using a general
pattern matching and replacement algorithm isomorphic to Prolog unification.
Dialects are specified as variants of a basis grammar for the base programming
l in two parts: a set of productions for the syntactic forms of the dialect,
descr replacements for the corresponding syntactic forms of the base language,
and and a set of transformation rules for the semantics of these forms, that
recursively reduce dialect syntactic forms to base language constructs
implementing the run model of the dialect. Each of these is described in a
Prolog-like VHLL notation TXL has been used to specify and automatically
implement several dialects of the programming languages Pascal and Turing,
including dialects with parametric polymorphism, object classes and multiple
inheritance.

Jim             James.R.Cordy@QueensU.CA
                Cordy@Qucis.bitnet
                utcsri!qucis!cordy
--
Send compilers articles to ima!compilers or, in a pinch, to Levine@YALE.EDU
Plausible paths are { decvax | harvard | yale | bbn}!ima
Please send responses to the originator of the message -- I cannot forward
mail accidentally sent back to compilers.  Meta-mail to ima!compilers-request