Incremental Static Semantic Analysis
Abstract
Language-based programming environments provide some or all of the functionality of a compiler, an interactive debugger, a browser, and a configuration manager behind a unified user interface based on an editing paradigm. As the user edits a program, the changes are processed incrementally, allowing for low-latency updates to derived information. This information can be made available to interactive environment services, such as browsing, navigation, and "real time" error-reporting. In this dissertation, we address an important subproblem in the construction of such environments, the generation of static semantic analyzers that operate in an incremental mode. Our work is embodied in the Colander II system, which introduces both a new metalanguage for the declarative specification of static semantic analyses and new techniques for generating an incremental analyzer from these specifications automatically. Our specification metalanguage melds the advantages of traditional attribute grammars, including amenability to extensive generation-time analysis, with the expressiveness and client-independence characteristic of Ballance's Logical Constraint Grammars. In comparison to traditional attribute grammars, our metalanguage allows much more of the incrementality inherent in a particular analysis task to be exposed within the formalism itself, where it can be exploited automatically by our implementation. Our incremental analysis algorithms exploit the attributed objects and function-valued attributes provided by our metalanguage, mapping these expressive notations onto a fine-grained incremental implementation. We are thus able to automatically generate incremental analyzers that handle long-distance dependencies and aggregate attributes efficiently.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA604432
Entities
People
- William H. Maddox Iii
Organizations
- University of California, Berkeley