High-level language facilities for low-level services

ABSTRACT

EZ is a language-based programming environment that offers the services provided separately by programming languages and operating systems in traditional environments. These services are provided as facilities of a high-level string processing language with a 'persistent' memory in which values exist indefinitely or until changed. In EZ, strings and associative tables provide traditional file and directory services. This paper concentrates on the use of EZ procedures and their activations, which, like other values, have indefinite lifetimes. In EZ, the low-level aspects of procedure execution, such as activation record creation, references to local variables, and access to state information, are accessible via high-level language constructs. As a result, traditionally distinct services can be provided by a single service in the EZ environment. Furthermore, such services can be written in EZ itself. An editor/debugger that illustrates the details of this approach is described.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

General Terms:
Design, Languages, Performance, Theory, Verification