The Design and Implementation of a Specification Language Type Checker

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to design a type checker for the SPEC language and to investigate its implementation using an attribute grammar tool. SPEC is a formal language for writing black-box specifications for large software systems. The type checker is a software tool which verifies the semantic accuracy of the declarations and their uses in a SPEC source program. The design specifically addresses language features which are especially important for large software system specifications such as generic parameters, name and operator overloading, subtypes, importation and inheritance. Additional discussion is provided concerning the handling of the 'non-block structured' nature of the specification language. This thesis implements two of the three aspects of type checking--name analysis and error reporting. Additionally, a definitive framework is laid for the final aspect, type consistency analysis. Keywords: Specification language, Type checker, Attribute grammar, Software engineering, SPEC Specification language, Computer programs. (JES)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1989
Accession Number
ADA213026

Entities

People

  • Robert G. Kopas

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Algorithms
  • Compilers
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Consistency
  • Formal Languages
  • Grammars
  • High Level Languages
  • Language
  • Programming Languages
  • Software Development
  • Software Development Tools
  • Standards

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Software Engineering.