Studies in Extensible Programming Languages
Abstract
The work is a study of two topics in the development of an extensible programming language, i.e., a high level language with powerful definitional facilities so designed that the language can be extended and thereby tailored for use in a wide variety of computer applications. The first topic is a theoretical treatment of an extension facility for syntax. It generalizes the notion of context-free grammars to allow the syntax of a language to be a function of its generated strings. It studies the formal properties of such grammars and presents an efficient algorithm for parsing their languages. The second topic of this work is a study of the design and formal specification of a base language on which an extensible language system can be built. It employs a formal definition to present a base language, examines the constraints on the design of such language, and discusses how these constraints shape the language. The language includes one extension facility, that for data types; the facility, its design, and its relation to similar facilities in other languages are analyzed.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1970
- Accession Number
- AD0715332
Entities
People
- Ben Wegbreit
Organizations
- Harvard University