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Reusable Components of Semantic Specifications

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Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development XII

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((TAOSD,volume 8989))

Abstract

Semantic specifications of programming languages typically have poor modularity. This hinders reuse of parts of the semantics of one language when specifying a different language – even when the two languages have many constructs in common – and evolution of a language may require major reformulation of its semantics. Such drawbacks have discouraged language developers from using formal semantics to document their designs.

In the PLanCompS project, we have developed a component-based approach to semantics. Here, we explain its modularity aspects, and present an illustrative case study: a component-based semantics for Caml Light. We have tested the correctness of the semantics by running programs on an interpreter generated from the semantics, comparing the output with that produced on the standard implementation of the language.

Our approach provides good modularity, facilitates reuse, and should support co-evolution of languages and their formal semantics. It could be particularly useful in connection with domain-specific languages and language-driven software development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The specifications of the current collection of funcons will not be finalised until we have tested their use in two further major case studies, as discussed in Sect. 6.

  2. 2.

    In fact labels in MSOS are the morphisms of a category, and the unobservable labels are identity morphisms, as explained in [42]. However, models of MSOS specifications correspond to ordinary labelled transition systems.

  3. 3.

    For an assignment that might throw an exception, the corresponding MSOS rule would make explicit the conditions under which that occurs, and incorporate the exception flag in the label.

  4. 4.

    In small-step semantics, the use of auxiliary funcons for specifying while-true appears to be unavoidable.

  5. 5.

    Static semantics sometimes requires such so-called partial evaluation.

  6. 6.

    In effect, non-local bindings correspond to implicit parameters.

  7. 7.

    The notation \({{\mathsf{\textit{abs} }}}(T_1, T_2)\) for abstraction types in the conference version of this paper [13] abbreviates \({{\mathsf{\textit{abs} }}}(\emptyset , T_1, T_2)\).

  8. 8.

    When \(I\) is bound to a type, \({{\mathbf {\mathsf{{bound}}}}}\text {-}{{\mathbf {\mathsf{{type}}}}}(I)\) corresponds to \({{\mathbf {\mathsf{{bound}}}}}\text {-}{{\mathbf {\mathsf{{value}}}}}(I)\), but it is evaluated as part of static semantics.

  9. 9.

    The lack of HOL support for evaluation contexts discouraged Owens from using them for his OCaml Light case study [53].

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Erik Ernst and the anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions for improvement. The reported work was supported by EPSRC grant (EP/I032495/1) to Swansea University for the PLanCompS project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Google, Inc., London, UK

    Martin Churchill

  2. PLanCompS Project, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Peter D. Mosses, Neil Sculthorpe & Paolo Torrini

Authors
  1. Martin Churchill
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  2. Peter D. Mosses
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  3. Neil Sculthorpe
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  4. Paolo Torrini
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter D. Mosses .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Shigeru Chiba

  2. University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Éric Tanter

  3. Google Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

    Erik Ernst

  4. Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany

    Robert Hirschfeld

Appendix

Appendix

This appendix contains the translation equations for the subset of Caml Light presented in Table 3, from which the illustrative examples in Sect. 3 are drawn. Our translation of the full Caml Light language is available online [12].

Markup for formatting the equations given below was inserted manually in the Stratego rules used to translate Caml Light programs to funcons. A few equations overlap; in Stratego we apply the more specific ones when possible.

Global names

$$\begin{aligned} \mathsf{ id }\, [\![ \mathtt{ I } ]\!] = {{\mathbf {\mathsf{{ id}}}}}('I') \end{aligned}$$

Type expressions

Constants

Patterns

Expressions

Pattern Matching

Let Bindings

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Churchill, M., Mosses, P.D., Sculthorpe, N., Torrini, P. (2015). Reusable Components of Semantic Specifications. In: Chiba, S., Tanter, É., Ernst, E., Hirschfeld, R. (eds) Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development XII. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8989. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46734-3_4

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