1,720,973 research outputs found
Software meta-language engineering and CBS
Get PDFThe SLE conference series is devoted to the engineering principles of software languages: their design, their implementation, and their evolution. This paper is about the role of language specification in SLE. A precise specification of a software language needs to be written in a formal meta-language, and it needs to co-evolve with the specified language. Moreover, different software languages often have features in common, which should provide opportunities for reuse of parts of language specifications. Support for co-evolution and reuse in a meta-language requires careful engineering of its design.The author has been involved in the development of several meta-languages for semantic specification, including action semantics and modular variants of structural operational semantics (MSOS, I-MSOS). This led to the PLanCompS project, and to the design of its meta-language, CBS, for component-based semantics. CBS comes together with an extensible library of reusable components called ‘funcons’, corresponding to fundamental programming constructs. The main aim of CBS is to optimise co-evolution and reuse of specifications during language development, and to make specification of language semantics almost as straightforward as context-free syntax specification.The paper discusses the engineering of a selection of previous meta-languages, assessing how well they support co-evolution and reuse. It then gives an introduction to CBS, and illustrates significant features. It also considers whether other current meta-languages might also be used to define an extensible library of funcons for use in component-based semantics
Using Spoofax to Support Online Code Navigation
No full textSpoofax is a language workbench. A Spoofax language specification generally includes name resolution: the analysis of bindings between definitions and references. When browsing code in the specified language using Spoofax, the bindings appear as hyperlinks, supporting precise name-based code navigation. However, Spoofax cannot be used for browsing code in online repositories. This paper is about a toolchain that uses Spoofax to generate hyperlinked twins of code repositories. These generated artefacts support the same precise code navigation as Spoofax, and can be browsed online. The technique has been prototyped on the CBS (Component-Based Semantics) specification language developed by the PLanCompS project, but could be used on any language after specifying its name resolution in Spoofax.Programming Language
A Component-Based Formal Language Workbench
No full textThe CBS framework supports component-based specification of programming languages. It aims to significantly reduce the effort of formal language specification, and thereby encourage language developers to exploit formal semantics more widely. CBS provides an extensive library of reusable language specification components, facilitating co-evolution of languages and their specifications. After introducing CBS and its formal definition, this short paper reports work in progress on generating an IDE for CBS from the definition. It also considers the possibility of supporting component-based language specification in other formal language workbenches.Programming Language
Online Name-Based Navigation for Software Meta-languages
No full textSoftware language design and implementation often involve specifications written in various esoteric meta-languages. Language workbenches generally include support for precise name-based navigation when browsing language specifications locally, but such support is lacking when browsing the same specifications online in code repositories.This paper presents a technique to support precise name-based navigation of language specifications in online repositories using ordinary web browsers. The idea is to generate hyperlinked twins: websites where verbatim copies of specification text are enhanced with hyperlinks between name references and declarations. By generating hyperlinks directly from the name binding analysis used internally in a language workbench, online navigation in hyperlinked twins is automatically consistent with local navigation.The presented technique has been implemented for the Spoofax language workbench, and used to generate hyperlinked twin websites from various language specifications in Spoofax meta-languages. However, the applicability of the technique is not limited to Spoofax, and developers of other language workbenches could presumably implement similar tooling, to make their language specifications more accessible to those who do not have the workbench installed.Programming Language
Prototyping SOS Meta-theory in Maude
No full textAbstractWe present a prototype implementation of SOS meta-theory in the Maude term rewriting language. The prototype defines the basic concepts of SOS meta-theory (e.g., transition formulae, deduction rules and transition system specifications) in Maude. Besides the basic definitions, we implement methods for checking the premises of some SOS meta-theorems (e.g., GSOS congruence meta-theorem) in this framework. Furthermore, we define a generic strategy for animating programs and models for semantic specifications in our meta-language. The general goal of this line of research is to develop a general-purpose tool that assists language designers by checking useful properties about the language under definition and by providing a rapid prototyping environment for scrutinizing the actual behavior of programs according to the defined semantics
On well-foundedness and expressiveness of promoted tyft : being promoted makes a difference
Get PDFIn this paper, we solve two open problems posed by Karen L. Bernstein regarding her promoted tyft format for structured operational semantics. We show that, unlike formats with closed terms as labels, such as the tyft format, the well-foundedness assumption cannot be dropped for the promoted tyft format while preserving the congruence result. We also show that the well-founded promoted tyft format is incomparable to the tyft format with closed terms as labels, i.e., there are transition relations that can be specified by the promoted tyft format but not by the tyft format, and vice versa
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Cooperative Specification via Composition Control
Get PDFHigh-level, declarative specification languages are typically highly modular: specifications are comprised of fragments that are themselves meaningful. As such, complex specifications are built from incrementally composed fragments. In a cooperative specification, different fragments are contributed by different agents, usually capturing requirements on different facets of the system. For example, legal regulators and system administrators cooperate to specify the behaviour of a data exchange system. In practice, cooperative specification is difficult, as different contributors’ requirements are difficult to elicit, express, and compose. In this work, we characterise cooperative specification and adopt an approach that leverages language features specifically introduced for controlling specification composition. In our approach, specifications model the domain as usual, but also specify how specifications may change. For example, a legal regulator defines ‘consent to process data’ and specifies which agents may consent, and which relaxations of the requirement are permitted. We propose and demonstrate generic language extensions that improve composition control in three case study languages: Datalog, Alloy, and eFLINT. We reflect on how these extensions improve composition control, and afford new data exchange scenarios. Finally, we relate our contributions to existing works, and to the greater vision of multi-agent data exchange to the satisfaction of their shared, complex, dynamic requirements.</p
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