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Klein, Casey; Clements, John; Dimoulas, Christos; Eastlund, Carl; Felleisen, Matthias; Flatt, Matthew; McCarthy, Jay; Rafkind, Jon; Tobin-Hochstadt, Sam; Findler, Robert Bruce

doi:10.1145/2103621.2103691

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…In this case, our tool traverses these possibilities breadth-first. We continue reducing until no reductions remain, we carried out 1000 reductions 1 or the execution times-out. The visited nodes and edges of the reduction graph are stored in a graph database.…”

Section: Graphredex At Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This enables programmers to see the start of the reduction graph and then select where they want to continue exploring. 1 This value was determined through experimentation and can be adjusted by the user when setting up the server. There is a significant cost to starting PLT Redex, so once it is started, we carry out at least as many reductions as the time it takes to startup PLT Redex.…”

Section: Global Exploration At Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was previously uncovered that this semantics allows programs to consume unbounded resources . 1 A minimal example of a program that exhibits this behavior is shown below:…”

Section: Comprehending Previously Uncovered Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A PLT Redex implementation of a language that describes the judgments of the system was implemented. 1 A reduction in that language corresponds to an application of a judgment in the original system. As such, the reduction graph is a search tree.…”

Section: A Theory Of Typed Coercions and Its Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In 2012, it was discovered that many published papers contain small mistakes in their formalization. 1 This hampers understanding and limits the bandwidth of communication. Many programming language researchers develop the semantics of their language constructs with pen and paper and then rigorously prove desirable properties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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GraphRedex: Look at your research

Singh

Scholliers

2021

Softw Pract Exp

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A significant aspect of designing new programming languages is to define their operational semantics. Working with a pen and paper version of such a semantics is notoriously difficult. For this reason, tools for computer aided semantics engineering were created. Many of these tools allow programmers to execute their language's operational semantics. An executable semantics makes it easier to verify whether the execution of a program leads to the desired result. When a program exhibits unexpected behavior, the programmer can consult the reduction graph to see what went wrong. Unfortunately, visualization of these graphs is currently not well-supported by most tools. Consequently, the comprehension of errors remains challenging. In this article, we present GraphRedex an open-source tool that empowers language designers to interactively explore their reduction graphs, offering three main benefits. First, a global exploration mode allows users to obtain a bird's-eye overview of the reduction graph and learn its high level workings. Second, a local exploration mode lets the programmer closely interact with the individual reduction rules. Third, our query interface allows the programmer to filter out and highlight specific regions of the reduction graph. We evaluated our tool by carrying out a user study showing that participants comprehend programs on average twice as fast while being able to answer questions more accurately. Finally, we demonstrate how GraphRedex helps to understand the semantics of two published works. Exploration of the semantics with GraphRedex unveiled an issue in one of the implementations of these works, which the author confirmed.

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Section: Graphredex At Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Global Exploration At Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was previously uncovered that this semantics allows programs to consume unbounded resources . 1 A minimal example of a program that exhibits this behavior is shown below:…”

Section: Comprehending Previously Uncovered Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Theory Of Typed Coercions and Its Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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GraphRedex: Look at your research

Singh

Scholliers

2021

Softw Pract Exp

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An Executable Formal Semantics of PHP

Filaretti

Maffeis

2014

ECOOP 2014 – Object-Oriented Programming

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Abstract. PHP is among the most used languages for server-side scripting. Although substantial effort has been spent on the problem of automatically analysing PHP code, vulnerabilities remain pervasive in web applications, and analysis tools do not provide any formal guarantees of soundness or coverage. This is partly due to the lack of a precise specification of the language, which is highly dynamic and often exhibits subtle behaviour. We present the first formal semantics for a substantial core of PHP, based on the official documentation and experiments with the Zend reference implementation. Our semantics is executable, and is validated by testing it against the Zend test suite. We define the semantics of PHP in a termrewriting framework which supports LTL model checking and symbolic execution. As a demonstration, we extend LTL with predicates for the verification of PHP programs, and analyse two common PHP functions.

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Reusable Components of Semantic Specifications

Churchill¹,

Mosses²,

Sculthorpe³

et al. 2015

Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development XII

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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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Cited by 16 publications

References 11 publications

GraphRedex: Look at your research

GraphRedex: Look at your research

An Executable Formal Semantics of PHP

Reusable Components of Semantic Specifications

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