research-article

Contracts for domain-specific languages in Ruby

Authors:

T. Stephen Strickland,

Brianna M. Ren,

Jeffrey S. FosterAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 50, Issue 2

Pages 23 - 34

https://doi.org/10.1145/2775052.2661092

Published: 14 October 2014 Publication History

Abstract

This paper concerns object-oriented embedded DSLs, which are popular in the Ruby community but have received little attention in the research literature. Ruby DSLs implement language keywords as implicit method calls to self; language structure is enforced by adjusting which object is bound to self in different scopes. While Ruby DSLs are powerful and elegant, they suffer from a lack of specification. In this paper, we introduce contracts for Ruby DSLs, which allow us to attribute blame appropriately when there are inconsistencies between an implementation and client. We formalize Ruby DSL contract checking in DSL, a core calculus that uses premethods with instance evaluation to enforce contracts. We then describe RDL, an implementation of Ruby DSL contracts. Finally, we present two tools that automatically infer RDL contracts: TypeInfer infers simple, type-like contracts based on observed method calls, and DSLInfer infers DSL keyword scopes and nesting by generating and testing candidate DSL usages based on initial examples. The type contracts generated by TypeInfer work well enough, though they are limited in precision by the small number of tests, while DSLInfer finds almost all DSL structure. Our goal is to help users understand a DSL from example programs.

References

[1]

An, J., Chaudhuri, A., Foster, J.S., Hicks, M.: Dynamic Inference of Static Types for Ruby. In: Principles of Programming Languages (POPL). pp. 459--472 (2011)

Digital Library

[2]

Ancona, D., Ancona, M., Cuni, A., Matsakis, N.: RPython: a Step Towards Reconciling Dynamically and Statically Typed OO Languages. In: DLS 2007. pp. 53--64 (2007)

Digital Library

[3]

Anderson, C., Giannini, P., Drossopoulou, S.: Towards Type Inference for JavaScript. In: European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming. LNCS, vol. 3586, pp. 428--452 (2005)

Digital Library

[4]

Austin, T.H., Disney, T., Flanagan, C.: Virtual values for language extension. In: Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications. pp. 921--938 (2011)

Digital Library

[5]

Aycock, J.: {Aggressive Type Inference}. In: International Python Conference (2000)

[6]

Bentley, J.: Programming pearls: little languages. Communications of the ACM 29(8), 711--721 (Aug 1986)

Digital Library

[7]

Bhargava, A.: contracts.ruby (2012), https://github.com/egonSchiele/contracts.ruby

[8]

Claessen, K., Ljunglof, P.: Typed logical variables in Haskell. In: Proceedings of the 2000 Haskell Workshop (2000)

[9]

Clinger, W., Rees, J.: Macros that work. In: Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages. pp. 155--162 (1991)

Digital Library

[10]

van Deursen, A., Klint, P., Visser, J.: Domain-specific languages: An annotated bibliography. SIGPLAN Not. 35(6), 26--36 (Jun 2000)

Digital Library

[11]

Dybvig, R.K., Hieb, R., Bruggeman, C.: Syntactic abstraction in Scheme. LISP and Symbolic Computation 5(4), 295--326 (1993)

Digital Library

[12]

Elliott, C.: Programming graphics processors functionally. In: Proceedings of the 2004 Haskell Workshop (2004), http://conal.net/papers/Vertigo/

Digital Library

[13]

Felleisen, M., Friedman, D.P.: Control operators, the SECD-machine, and the ε-calculus. In: Formal Description of Programming Concepts III. pp. 193--217 (1986)

[14]

Findler, R.B., Blume, M.: Contracts as pairs of projections. In: International Conference on Functional and Logic Programming. pp. 226--241 (2006)

Digital Library

[15]

Findler, R.B., Felleisen, M.: Contracts for higher-order functions. In: International Conference on Functional Programming. pp. 48--59 (Oct 2002)

Digital Library

[16]

Flatt, M.: Composable and Compilable Macros: You Want it When? In: International Conference on Functional Programming. pp. 72--83 (2002)

Digital Library

[17]

Flatt, M., Culpepper, R., Darais, D., Findler, R.B.: {Macros that Work Together. Journal of Functional Programming 22, 181--216 (2012)

Digital Library

[18]

Flatt, M., PLT: Reference: Racket. Tech. Rep. PLT-TR-2010--1, PLT Inc. (2010), http://racket-lang.org/tr1/

[19]

Furr, M., An, J., Foster, J.S., Hicks, M.: The Ruby Intermediate Langauge. In: Dynamic Languages Symposium (DLS). pp. 89--98. Orlando, Florida (October 2009)

Digital Library

[20]

Guy L. Steele, Jr.: Common LISP: the Language, 2nd Edition. Digital Press, Newton, MA, USA (1990)

Digital Library

[21]

Hudak, P.: Building domain-specific embedded languages. ACM Computing Surveys 28 (1996)

Digital Library

[22]

Hudak, P.: Modular domain specific languages and tools. In: in Proceedings of Fifth International Conference on Software Reuse. pp. 134--142. IEEE Computer Society Press (1998)

Digital Library

[23]

Leijen, D., Meijer, E.: Domain specific embedded compilers. In: Conference on Domain-specific Languages. pp. 109--122 (1999)

Digital Library

[24]

Ousterhout, J.K., Jones, K.: Tcl and the Tk Toolkit, 2nd Edition. Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston, MA, USA (2009)

Digital Library

[25]

Perrotta, P.: Metaprogramming Ruby. Pragmatic Bookshelf (2010)

Digital Library

[26]

Reid, A., Peterson, J., Hager, G., Hudak, P.: Prototyping real-time vision systems: an experiment in dsl design. In: International Conference on Software engineering. pp. 484--493 (1999)

Digital Library

[27]

Ren, B.M., Toman, J., Strickland, T.S., Foster, J.S.: {The {R}uby Type Checker}. In: Symposium on Applied Computing. pp. 1565--1572 (2013)

Digital Library

[28]

Riehl, J.: Language embedding and optimization in Mython. In: Symposium on Dynamic Languages. pp. 39--48. DLS '09 (2009)

Digital Library

[29]

Sperber, M., Dybvig, R.K., Flatt, M., Van Straaten, A., Findler, R., Matthews, J.: Revised6 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme. Journal of Functional Programming 19, 1--301 (2009)

Digital Library

[30]

Strickland, T.S., Felleisen, M.: Contracts for first-class classes. In: Symposium on Dynamic Languages. pp. 97--111 (Oct 2010)

Digital Library

[31]

Strickland, T.S., Tobin-Hochstadt, S., Findler, R.B., Flatt, M.: Chaperones and Impersonators: Run-time Support for Reasonable Interposition. In: Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications. pp. 943--962 (2012)

Digital Library

[32]

Team, R.C.: R Language Definition. http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-lang.html

[33]

Thiemann, P.: Modeling HTML in Haskell. In: International Workshop on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages. pp. 263--277 (2000)

Digital Library

[34]

Thiemann, P.: Towards a Type System for Analyzing JavaScript. In: European Symposium on Programming. LNCS, vol. 3444, pp. 408--422 (2005)

Digital Library

[35]

Wickham, H.: Advanced R programming (Nov 2013), http://adv-r.had.co.nz/dsl.html

Cited By

Kazerounian MFoster JMin B(2021)SimTyper: sound type inference for Ruby using type equality predictionProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34854835:OOPSLA(1-27)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485483
Kazerounian MGuria SVazou NFoster JVan Horn DMcKinley KFisher K(2019)Type-level computations for Ruby librariesProceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3314221.3314630(966-979)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3314221.3314630
Chang SKnauth AGreenman B(2017)Type systems as macrosACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300988652:1(694-705)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009886
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Contracts for domain-specific languages in Ruby
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Reliability
    2. Validation
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation

Recommendations

Contracts for domain-specific languages in Ruby
DLS '14: Proceedings of the 10th ACM Symposium on Dynamic languages

This paper concerns object-oriented embedded DSLs, which are popular in the Ruby community but have received little attention in the research literature. Ruby DSLs implement language keywords as implicit method calls to self; language structure is ...
Development of internal domain-specific languages: design principles and design patterns
PLoP '11: Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs

A great part of software development challenges can be solved by one universal tool: Abstraction. Developers solve development challenges by using expressions and concepts that abstract from too technical details. One especially supportive tool for ...
A domain-specific language for building self-optimizing AST interpreters
GPCE '14

Self-optimizing AST interpreters dynamically adapt to the provided input for faster execution. This adaptation includes initial tests of the input, changes to AST nodes, and insertion of guards that ensure assumptions still hold. Such specialization ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 50, Issue 2

DLS '14

February 2015

146 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/2775052

Editor:
Andy Gill
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

Issue’s Table of Contents

DLS '14: Proceedings of the 10th ACM Symposium on Dynamic languages
October 2014
160 pages
ISBN:9781450332118
DOI:10.1145/2661088
General Chair:
Andrew Black
Portland State University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Laurence Tratt
King's College London, UK

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 October 2014

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 50, Issue 2

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Division of Computing and Communication Foundations

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

6
Total Citations
View Citations
163
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)3
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 12 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Kazerounian MFoster JMin B(2021)SimTyper: sound type inference for Ruby using type equality predictionProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34854835:OOPSLA(1-27)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485483
Kazerounian MGuria SVazou NFoster JVan Horn DMcKinley KFisher K(2019)Type-level computations for Ruby librariesProceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3314221.3314630(966-979)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3314221.3314630
Chang SKnauth AGreenman B(2017)Type systems as macrosACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300988652:1(694-705)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009886
Chang SKnauth AGreenman BCastagna GGordon A(2017)Type systems as macrosProceedings of the 44th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages10.1145/3009837.3009886(694-705)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3009837.3009886
Ren BFoster J(2016)Just-in-time static type checking for dynamic languagesACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2980983.290812751:6(462-476)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2980983.2908127
Ren BFoster JKrintz CBerger E(2016)Just-in-time static type checking for dynamic languagesProceedings of the 37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/2908080.2908127(462-476)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2908080.2908127

View Options

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

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents