Strategic programming meets adaptive programming

Abstract

C e n t r u m v o o r W i s k u n d e e n I n f o r m a t i c a Strategic Programming Meets Adaptive ProgrammingABSTRACT Strategic programming is a generic programming idiom for processing compound data such as terms or object structures. At the heart of the approach is the separation of two concerns: basic data-processing computations vs. traversal schemes. Actual traversals can be composed by passing the former as arguments to the latter. Traversal schemes can be defined by the strategic programmer using a combinator style that relies on primitives for layered traversal. In this paper, we adopt an aspect-oriented view on strategic programming. This necessitates the instantiation of aspect-oriented terms such as crosscutting, join point, and advice. More specifically, we compare strategic programming with adaptive programming, which is a wellestablished aspectual approach to the traversal of object structures. ACM Computing Classification ABSTRACTStrategic programming is a generic programming idiom for processing compound data such as terms or object structures. At the heart of the approach is the separation of two concerns: basic dataprocessing computations vs. traversal schemes. Actual traversals are composed by passing the former as arguments to the latter. Traversal schemes can be defined by the strategic programmer using a combinator style that relies on primitives for layered traversal. In this paper, we take a look at strategic programming from an aspect-oriented programming perspective. Throughout the paper, we compare strategic programming with adaptive programming, which is a well-established aspectual approach to the traversal of object structures. We start from the observation that aspect-oriented programming terms, e.g., crosscutting, join point, and advice can be instantiated for aspectual traversal approaches.

Programming errors in traversal programs over structured data

“…The technique of § 4.1 to use less generic traversal schemes has also been explored in [16] in the context of devising simpler types for traversal programs and more efficient implementations. The technique of § 4.4 to statically check for reachable types is inspired by adaptive programming [18,15,12] that subjects its traversal specifications to a similar check.…”

Decorated Attribute Grammars: Attribute Evaluation Meets Strategic Programming

“…To define high-level attribute propagation patterns, we draw inspiration from strategic programming [33,20,21]. This technique allows the specification of traversal patterns in a generic fashion, independent of the structure of a particular tree, using a number of basic, generic traversal operations.…”

“…all is one of the canonical generic traversal operators of strategic programming [33,20]. It applies a function to all children of a term.…”

“…Decorators are inspired by strategic programming, where generic traversal strategies enable a separation between basic rewrite rules defining a tree transformation and the way in which they are applied to a tree [33,20,21]. In our case, local attribute equations define the core values of a tree computation, while decorators describe how those values are combined across the tree structure.…”

LEESA: Embedding Strategic and XPath-Like Object Structure Traversals in C++

“…Lämmel et al [31] present a way of realizing adaptive programming predicates (e.g., from, to, through, and bypass) by composing SP primitive combinators and traversal schemes. Due to a lack of static type information, their simulation of AP in terms of SP lacks important aspects of AP, such as static checking and avoiding unnecessary traversal into substructures.…”