Analysis of Functional Programs using Attribute Grammars

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Publication Type technical report
School or College College of Engineering
Department Computing, School of
Creator Badovinatz, Peter Richard
Title Analysis of Functional Programs using Attribute Grammars
Date 1985-08
Description An attribute grammar combines the standard context-free grammar that defines the syntax of a programming language with attributes that define semantic aspects of the language. This information makes attribute grammars very useful for performing the semantic analysis of programs. Functional programming languages have their syntax based upon function applications and compositions thereof. This class of programming languages is attractive due to its clear, simple svntax, range of applicability and deterministic execution behavior under parallel execution. At present, the use of functional programming languages is limited due to a lack of effective compilation and optimization techniques for efficient execution. By directing the descriptive power of attribute grammars toward functional programming language compilation, it is possible to develop optimization information leading to efficient compilation and execution of functional programming languages. This is demonstrated here by the development of a system to optimize programs written in the functional programming language called FEL (Functian-Equation Language). A difficulty with attribute grammars lies in developing an efficient method of representing and calculating the semantic attributes of a program. This problem is solved by using logic programming system techniques in Prolog Prolog allows very powerful programs to be written quickly and easily, with the code automaticallv given a template. In addition, Prolog contains logical variables which allow natural data sharing among disjoint parts of an arbitrary data structure without having to pass the data explicitly to the various locations. Through these features it is possible to develop an efficient system for using attribute grammars to perform program analysis.
Type Text
Subject programming languages, functional programs; attributed grammar
Language eng
Bibliographic Citation Badovinatz, P. R. (1985). Analysis of functional programs using attribute grammars.
Series University of Utah Computer Science Technical Report
Relation is Part of ARPANET
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 36,282,812 bytes
File Name Badovinatz-Analysis_Of.pdf
Conversion Specifications Original scanned with Kirtas 2400 and saved as 400 ppi uncompressed TIFF. PDF generated by Adobe Acrobat Pro X for CONTENTdm display
ARK ark:/87278/s6n60nmd
Setname ir_computersa
ID 97449
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6n60nmd
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