Assimilating MetaBorg:: embedding language tools in languages

ABSTRACT

The MetaBorg usage pattern allows concrete syntax to be associated with application programmer interfaces (API's). Once a concrete syntax is defined, library writers use the Stratego language to write transformations from the concrete syntax to API data and calls in the host language. The result is a compile time translator from the combined host and domain languages to the host language. This translator is not programmable at compile time, and little or none of the infrastructure can be leveraged by a program at run time.These limitations make the MetaBorg pattern difficult or impractical to use in interactive programming. One possibility for adding interactivity to language assimilation is the application of the MetaBorg pattern to Stratego/XT itself. Assimilating language tools into languages, especially dynamic languages, better serves incremental and interactive development. Furthermore, language tool assimilation allows experimentation with language extension at compiler-compile time, compile time, load time and run time.This paper looks at language tool assimilation and makes three contributions. First, it introduces the domain-specific optimization use case as an additional problem that Stratego and related technology might solve. Second, it "partially evaluates" the MetaBorg pattern on the domain-specific languages used in Stratego/XT. Third, and finally, it generalizes the result of the MetaBorg partial evaluation, identifying several applications and application strategies.

REFERENCES

• 1: Annika Aasa , Kent Petersson , Dan Synek, Concrete syntax for data objects in functional languages, Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming, p.96-105, July 25-27, 1988, Snowbird, Utah, United States [doi>10.1145/62678.62688]
• 2: Alfred V. Aho , Ravi Sethi , Jeffrey D. Ullman, Compilers: principles, techniques, and tools, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1986
• 3: Martin Bravenboer, Rob Vermaas, Jurgen Vinju, and Eelco Visser. Generalized type-based disambiguation of meta programs with concrete object syntax. In Robert Glück and Mike Lowry, editors, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE'05), volume 3676 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 157--172, Tallin, Estonia, September 2005. Springer.
• 4: Martin Bravenboer , Eelco Visser, Concrete syntax for objects: domain-specific language embedding and assimilation without restrictions, Proceedings of the 19th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, October 24-28, 2004, Vancouver, BC, Canada
• 5: M. G. T. Van den Brand , H. A. de Jong , P. Klint , P. A. Olivier, Efficient annotated terms, Software—Practice & Experience, v.30 n.3, p.259-291, Mar.1.2000 [doi>10.1002/(SICI)1097-024X(200003)30:3<259::AID-SPE298>3.0.CO;2-Y]
• 6: Jason Eckhardt, Roumen Kaiabachev, Emir Pasalic, Kedar~N. Swadi, and Walid Taha. Implicitly heterogeneous multi-stage programming. In GPCE, pages 275--292, 2005.
• 7: Matthew Flatt, Composable and compilable macros:: you want it when?, Proceedings of the seventh ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming, p.72-83, October 04-06, 2002, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
• 8: Christopher W. Fraser , David R. Hanson , Todd A. Proebsting, Engineering a simple, efficient code-generator generator, ACM Letters on Programming Languages and Systems (LOPLAS), v.1 n.3, p.213-226, Sept. 1992 [doi>10.1145/151640.151642]
• 9: Robert Grimm. xtc: Making C Safely Extensible, August 2004. Available at http://www.cs.nyu.edu/rgrimm/papers/dslopt04.pdf.
• 10: Paul Klint , Ralf Lämmel , Chris Verhoef, Toward an engineering discipline for grammarware, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), v.14 n.3, p.331-380, July 2005 [doi>10.1145/1072997.1073000]
• 11: John McCarthy, LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual, The MIT Press, 1962
• 12: Marjan Mernik , Jan Heering , Anthony M. Sloane, When and how to develop domain-specific languages, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.37 n.4, p.316-344, December 2005 [doi>10.1145/1118890.1118892]
• 13: Simon Peyton-Jones, Andrew Tolmach, and Tony Hoare. Playing by the rules: Rewriting as a practical optimisation technique in GHC. In Ralf Hinze, editor, Preliminary Proceedings of the 2001 ACM SIGPLAN Haskell Workshop (HW '01), pages 203--233, Firenze, Italy, September 2001.
• 14: Programming Languages Team. PLT Scheme. http://www.plt-scheme.org/.
• 15: Jonathan Riehl. Python Enhancement Proposal PEP 269 -- Pgen Module for Python, 2001. http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0269/.
• 16: Brian Cantwell Smith. Reflection and Semantics in a Procedural Language. PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 1982.
• 17: Tim Sheard, Languages of the future, Companion to the 19th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications, October 24-28, 2004, Vancouver, BC, CANADA [doi>10.1145/1028664.1028711]
• 18: Standard ML of New Jersey. The SMLofNJ structure, December 1997. http://www.smlnj.org/doc/SMLofNJ/pages/smlnj.html.
• 19: Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language, Third Edition, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1997
• 20: Sun Microsystems. JVMTM Tool Interface (JVM TI), 2004. http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/jvmti/.
• 21: Walid Taha. A gentle introduction to multi-stage programming. In Domain-Specific Program Generation, pages 30--50, 2003.
• 22: Eelco Visser. Syntax Definition for Language Prototyping. PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, September 1997.
• 23: Malcolm Wallace , Colin Runciman, Haskell and XML: generic combinators or type-based translation?, Proceedings of the fourth ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming, p.148-159, September 27-29, 1999, Paris, France

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.12 Interoperability
      D.2.6 Programming Environments
          Subjects: Interactive environments

General Terms:
Design, Languages

Keywords:
MetaBorg, SDF, concrete syntax macros, extensible syntax, self application, staged multi--language programming, stratego