Article

Free access

Automatic generation of fixed-point-finding evaluators for circular, but well-defined, attribute grammars

Author:

Rodney FarrowAuthors Info & Claims

SIGPLAN '86: Proceedings of the 1986 SIGPLAN symposium on Compiler construction

Pages 85 - 98

https://doi.org/10.1145/12276.13320

Published: 01 July 1986 Publication History

Abstract

In the traditional formulation of attribute grammars (AGs) circularities are not allowed, that is, no attribute-instance in any derivation tree may be defined in terms of itself. Elsewhere in mathematics and computing, though, circular (or recursive) definitions are commonplace, and even essential. Given appropriate constraints, recursive definitions are well-founded, and the least fixed-points they denote are computable. This is also the case for circular AGs.

This paper presents constraints on individual attributes and semantic functions of an AG that are sufficient to guarantee that a circular AG specifies a well-defined translation and that circularly-defined attribute-instances can be computed via successive approximation. AGs that satisfy these constraints are called finitely recursive.

An attribute evaluation paradigm is presented that incorporates successive approximation to evaluate circular attribute-instances, along with an algorithm to automatically construct such an evaluator. The attribute evaluators so produced are static in the sense that the order of evaluation at each production-instance in the derivation-tree is determined at the time that each translator is generated.

A final algorithm is presented that tells which individual attributes and functions must satisfy the constraints.

References

[1]

Alfred V. Aho and Jeffery D. Ullman. Principles of Compiler Desiqn. Addison'Wesley, 1977.

Digital Library

[2]

Bijan Arbab. Compiling Attribute Grammars into Prolog. IBM Los Angeles Scientific Center, July 1985.

[3]

W. Babich and M. Jazayeri. Data-flow Analysis: the Method of Attributes. Acta informatica, March, 1978.

[4]

L.M. Chirica and D. F. Martin. An algebraic formulation of Knuthian semantics. Mathematical Systems Theory 13:1-27, 1979.

[5]

B. Courcelle and P. Franchi-Zannettacci. Attribute Grammars and Recursive Program Schemes. In Theoretlcal Computer Science i_/7, pages 163-191., 1982.

[6]

Rodney Farrow. Sub-Protocol Evaluators for Attribute Grammars. In Proceedlnqs of the SIGPLA/~ 84 SYmposium on Com611~r Construction. ACM, June, 1984.

Digital Library

[7]

Rodney Farrow. LINGUIST-86 Yet another translator writing system based on attribute grammars. In Proceedings of the SIGPLAN 82 symposium on Com~ Construction. ACM, June, 1982.

Digital Library

[8]

Rodney Farrow. covers of Attribute Grammars and Sub-Protocol Attr1~e -- Evaluators. Technical Report, Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, September, 1983.

[9]

H. Ganzinger, R. Giegerich, U. Moncke and R. Wilhelm. A Truly Generative Semantics- Directed Compiler Generator. In Proceedings of the SIGPLAN Symposium on Com~ Construction. ACM, June, 1982.

Digital Library

[10]

Larry G. Jones and Janos Simon. Hierarchical VLSI Design Systems Based on Attribute Grammars. In Conference Record of the Thirteenth ACM Symp6s~-~ on Principles of Languages. ACM, January, 1986.

Digital Library

[11]

J. B. Kam and J. D. Ullman. Global data flow analysis and iterative algorithms. ~. ACM 23(1), 19V6.

Digital Library

[12]

Uwe Kastens, Br~gitte Hutt, and Erich Zimmermann. GAG:A Practical ~ G@nerator. Spring---~ag~ Berlzn-Heidelberg-New York, 1982.

[13]

U. Kastens. Ordered attribute grammars. Acta Informatica 13, 1980.

[14]

Takuya Katayama. Translation of Attribute Grammars into Procedures. ACM Transactions on Proqrammlnq Lanquages and S s_~ 6(3), July, 1984.

Digital Library

[15]

K. Kennedy and J. Ramanathan. A deterministic attribute grammar svaluator based on dynamic sequencing. ACM TOPLAS i, 1979.

Digital Library

[16]

K. Kennedy and S. K. Warren. Automatic generation of efficient evaluators for attribute grammars. In Conference Record of the Third ACM symposium on Prlnc-{Dles of P-~gramming Languages. ACM,

Digital Library

[17]

G. A. Kilda11. A unified approach to global program optimization, In Conference Record of the ACM S~osium on Pr-~cTDles of Programmlng Languages. ACM, October, 1973.

Digital Library

[18]

D. E. Knuth. Semantics of context-free languages. Mathematica! S_~stems Theoz~f 2, 1968. correction in volume 5, number i.

[19]

Brian H. Mayoh. Attribute Grammars and Mathematical Semantics. SIAM Journal of Computing 10(3), August, 1981.

[20]

Lawrence Paulson. A Semantics-Directed Compiler Generator. In Conference Record of the Ninth ACM Symposium on Prlnc-'~ples of Lanquaggs. ACM, January, 1982.

Digital Library

[21]

Kari-Jouko Raiha, M. Saarinen, M. Sarjakoski, S. Sippu, E. Soisalon-Soininen and M. Tienari. Revised R_~ort on the Compiler wri~inqs~Z-~t~ ~8. - Technical Report A-1983-I, Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Helsinkl, 1983.

[22]

W.A. Schulz. language Synthesis ~n a translator. P hD-~hesis,~University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, July, 1976.

[23]

Stephen K. Skedzeleski. Definition and Use of Attribute Reevaluatxon In A-ttribUted Grammars. PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, December, 1978.

Digital Library

Cited By

Stein BChang BSridharan M(2024)Interactive Abstract Interpretation with Demanded SummarizationACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/364844146:1(1-40)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3648441
Stein BChang BSridharan MFreund SYahav E(2021)Demanded abstract interpretationProceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3453483.3454044(282-295)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3453483.3454044
Helm DKübler FReif MEichberg MMezini MDevanbu PCohen MZimmermann T(2020)Modular collaborative program analysis in OPALProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3409765(184-196)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3368089.3409765
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Automatic generation of fixed-point-finding evaluators for circular, but well-defined, attribute grammars

Recommendations

Automatic generation of fixed-point-finding evaluators for circular, but well-defined, attribute grammars

In the traditional formulation of attribute grammars (AGs) circularities are not allowed, that is, no attribute-instance in any derivation tree may be defined in terms of itself. Elsewhere in mathematics and computing, though, circular (or recursive) ...
Automatic generation of efficient evaluators for attribute grammars
POPL '76: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on Principles on programming languages

The translation process may be divided into a syntactic phase and a semantic phase. Context-free grammars can be used to describe the set of syntactically correct source texts in a formal yet intuitively appealing way, and many techniques are now known ...
Circular attribute grammars with remote attribute references and their evaluators
Abstract
Attribute grammars (AGs) are a suitable formalism for the development of language processing systems. However, for languages including unrestricted labeled jumps, such as “goto” in C, the optimizers in compilers are difficult to write in AGs. This ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGPLAN '86: Proceedings of the 1986 SIGPLAN symposium on Compiler construction

July 1986

275 pages

ISBN:0897911970

DOI:10.1145/12276

Editor:
Richard L Wexelblat
Philips Laboratories, Briarcliff Manor, NY

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 21, Issue 7
July 1986
275 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/13310
Editor:
Richard L. Wexelblat
Philips Laboratories, Briarcliff Manor, NY
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 1986 Author.

Sponsors

SIGPLAN: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 July 1986

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

SCC86

Sponsor:

SIGPLAN

SCC86: SIGPLAN Symposium on Compiler Construction

June 25 - 27, 1986

California, Palo Alto, USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

84
Total Citations
View Citations
599
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)100
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)27

Reflects downloads up to 15 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Stein BChang BSridharan M(2024)Interactive Abstract Interpretation with Demanded SummarizationACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/364844146:1(1-40)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3648441
Stein BChang BSridharan MFreund SYahav E(2021)Demanded abstract interpretationProceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3453483.3454044(282-295)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3453483.3454044
Helm DKübler FReif MEichberg MMezini MDevanbu PCohen MZimmermann T(2020)Modular collaborative program analysis in OPALProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3409765(184-196)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3368089.3409765
Öqvist JHedin GCombemale BMernik MRumpe B(2017)Concurrent circular reference attribute grammarsProceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/3136014.3136032(151-162)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3136014.3136032
Bürger CPaige RDi Ruscio DVölter M(2015)Reference attribute grammar controlled graph rewriting: motivation and overviewProceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/2814251.2814257(89-100)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2814251.2814257
Fors NCedersjö GHedin GFrance RGhosh SLeavens G(2015)JavaRAG: a Java library for reference attribute grammarsProceedings of the 14th International Conference on Modularity10.1145/2724525.2724572(55-67)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2724525.2724572
Söderberg EHedin G(2015)Declarative rewriting through circular nonterminal attributesComputer Languages, Systems and Structures10.1016/j.cl.2015.08.00844:PA(3-23)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cl.2015.08.008
Rosendahl M(2013)Abstract Interpretation as a Programming LanguageElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.129.7129(84-104)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2013
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.129.7
SöDerberg EEkman THedin GMagnusson E(2013)Extensible intraprocedural flow analysis at the abstract syntax tree levelScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2012.02.00278:10(1809-1827)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.scico.2012.02.002
Saad CBauer B(2013)Data-Flow Based Model Analysis and Its ApplicationsProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering Languages and Systems - Volume 810710.1007/978-3-642-41533-3_43(707-723)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-41533-3_43
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents