Two-Level Functional Languages

Nielson, Flemming; Nielson, Hanne Riis

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511526572

Cited by 131 publications

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“…In contrast to our approach, for example Nielson and Nielson [58] do not involve the machine state when relating semantic values. Instead, they require target values to be "self-contained".…”

Section: A New Approachmentioning

confidence: 93%

Provably Correct Compiler Generation

Palsberg¹

1992

DPB

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We have designed, implemented, and proved the correctness of a compiler generator that accepts action semantic descriptions of imperative programming languages. We have used it to generate compilers for both a toy language and a non-trivial subset of Ada. The generated compilers emit absolute code for an abstract RISC machine language that is assembled into code for the SPARC and the HP Precision Architecture. The generated code is an order of magnitude better than that produced by compilers generated by the classical systems of Mosses, Paulson, and Wand. Our machine language needs no runtime type-checking and is thus more realistic than those considered in previous compiler proofs. We use solely algebraic specifications; proofs are given in the initial model. The use of action semantics makes the processable language specifications easy to read and pleasant to work with. We view our compiler generator as a promising first step towards user-friendly and automatic generation of realistic and provably correct compilers. AckowledgementsThe author thanks Peter Mosses for advice and support. The author also thanks Peter Ørbaek for implementing the Cantor system.Overviews Det er et langsigtet mål, for de der arbejder med oversaetter generering og korrekthed, at konstruere en sprog-designer's arbejdsbaenk, med henblik på støtte af sprog-design processen. Hovedkomponterne i sådan en arbejdsbaenk er:• Et specifikations-sprog hvis specifikationer er lette at vedligeholde, og tilgaengelige uden kendskab til den underliggende teori; og• En oversaetter generator som genererer realistiske og bevisligt korrekte oversaettere ud fra sådanne specifikationer.ii Med sådan en arbejdsbaenk kan sprog-designeren:• Dokumentere design beslutninger;• Eksperimentere med det nye sprog efter en aendring; og• Aflevere en oversaetter til programmørerne umiddelbart efter designet er faerdigt.Hidtidigt arbejde har ikke formået at bevise korrektheden af nogen realistisk oversaetter generator. Derimod er det lykkedes i flere projekter at generere oversaettere, der tåler sammenligning med kommercielt tilgaengelige oversaetere. Disse projekters' erfaring eq at det bliver lettere at generere gode oversaetere, hvis:• En sprog definition ikke indeholder en fuldstaendig implementations model; og• Specifikations-sproget er rettet mod sprog, som traditionelt implementeres via en oversaetter.Vi har designet, implementeret og bevist korrektheden af en oversaetter generator, som potentielt kunne blive en komponent i en sprog-designer's arbejdsbaenk. Sum specifikations-sprog benytter vi Mosses' aktions-notation, som blev designet netop med henblik på at undgå at et sprog-design fastlaegger en implementations model. Den centrale komponent i oversaetter generatoren er en oversaetter fra aktions-notation til absolut kode for en abstrakt RISC maskine. Når oversaetter-generatoren gives en sprog-definition i aktions-notation, så bliver den sammensat med aktions-oversaetteren, hvilket tilsammen giver en korrekt oversaetter for det definerede sprog, idet vi h...

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Section: A New Approachmentioning

confidence: 93%

Provably Correct Compiler Generation

Palsberg¹

1992

DPB

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“…TSL is not a partial-evaluation system per se; however, for reasons discussed in [19, §3.4], the TSL compiler performs bindingtime analysis [16], and annotates the code for interpInstr to create an intermediate representation in a two-level language [25]. In our case, level 1 corresponds to parameter I of interpInstr, and level 2 corresponds to parameter state.…”

Section: Binding-time Analysis and 2-level Semanticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In §8, we describe how, using binding-time analysis [16] and a two-level intermediate language [25], the reinterpretation technique can be used to generate implementations of symbolic-analysis primitives automatically, using a meta-system that generates program-analysis components from a specification of the subject language's semantics. In particular, we have created a system in which, for the cost of writing just one specification-of the semantics of the programming language of interest, in the form of an interpreter expressed in a functional language-one obtains automatically-generated implementations of all three symbolic-analysis functions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Symbolic Analysis via Semantic Reinterpretation

Lim

Lal

Reps

2009

Model Checking Software

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In recent years, the use of symbolic analysis in systems for testing and verifying programs has experienced a resurgence. By "symbolic program analysis", we mean logic-based techniques to analyze state changes along individual program paths. The three basic primitives used in symbolic analysis are functions that perform forward symbolic evaluation, weakest precondition, and symbolic composition by manipulating formulas.The conventional approach to implementing systems that use symbolic analysis is to write each of the three symbolic-analysis functions by hand for the programming language of interest. In this paper, we develop a method to create implementations of these primitives so that they can be made available easily for multiple programming languages-particularly for multiple machine-code instruction sets. In particular, we have created a system in which, for the cost of writing just one specification-of the semantics of the programming language of interest, in the form of an interpreter expressed in a functional language-one obtains automaticallygenerated implementations of all three symbolic-analysis functions. We show that this can be carried out even for programming languages with pointers, aliasing, dereferencing, and address arithmetic. The technique has been implemented, and used to automatically generate symbolic-analysis primitives for multiple machinecode instruction sets.

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“…She considers BTA in the style of Nielson and Nielson [27]. She shows how that particular analysis fits into the general framework, but does not compare different alternatives for BTA and her work is not geared towards partial evaluation.…”

Section: Comparison Of the Equational And Inclusion-based Btasmentioning

confidence: 99%

A unified framework for binding-time analysis

Thiemann

1997

TAPSOFT '97: Theory and Practice of Software Development

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Abstract. Binding-time analysis is a crucial part of o~ine partial evaluation. It is often specified as a non-standard type system. Many typebased binding-time analyses are reminiscent of simple type systems with additional features like recursive types. We make this connection explicit by expressing binding-time analysis with annotated type systems that separate the concerns of type inference from those of binding-time annotation. The separation enables us to explore a design space for bindingtime analysis by varying the underlying type system and the annotation strategy independently. The result is a classification of different monova~iant binding-time analyses which allows us to compare their relative power. Due to the systematic approach we uncover some novel analyses.A partial evaluator separates the computation of a source program into two or more stages [7,20]. Using the (static) input of the first stage it transforms a source program into a specialized residual program. Application of the residual program to the (dynamic) input of the second stage yields the same answer as application of the source program to the entire input. The binding time of an input is the information whether it is static or dynamic.Binding-time analysis (BTA) is a prepass of a partial evaluator that annotates each expression in the source program with the earliest (static is earlier than dynamic) time at which it can be evaluated. The actual specializer is a mere interpreter of annotated programs that executes the static expressions and generates code for the remaining ones.Binding-time analyses come in two flavors: A monovariant BTA computes a single mapping of program points to binding-times, whereas a polyvariant BTA allows for several such mappings. Both alternatives have their merits. Monovariant BTAs are simple and efficient to implement [4,14,15,18,20]. However, in some applications static and dynamic values flow through the same program points, which forces a monovariant BTA to annotate the program points as dynamic. A polyvariant BTA [5,6] yields better results in these cases, but is also considerably more expensive.In the current work we concentrate on monovariant BTAs for the lambda calculus as they are used in many partial evaluators I4, 14,15,18]. Our analyses achieve some degree of polyvariance because we admit liberal binding-time coercions and rely on a more precise inclusion-based flow analysis framework.BTA is often presented as a monolithic analysis which makes it unnecessarily hard to understand and to reason about [2,3,14,18,21]. Recent work has shown the possibility to modularize BTA into several stages [4,12,13]. All of these

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Two-Level Functional Languages

Cited by 131 publications

References 0 publications

Provably Correct Compiler Generation

Provably Correct Compiler Generation

Symbolic Analysis via Semantic Reinterpretation

A unified framework for binding-time analysis

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