Syntax Macros For Free

The following paper was submitted to the Haskell 2010.

Title : First Class Syntax, Semantics, and Their Composition

Subtitle: How to assemble a compiler on the fly

Authors : Marcos Viera, S. Doaitse Swierstra, Atze Dijkstra and Arthur Baars

Abstract : The idea of having an extendible language is appealing and raises the question how to construct extensible compilers. In recent years we have developed a collection of techniques which together make this possible in Haskell: transformation of typed abstract syntax trees makes it possible to construct parsers on the fly in a type-safe way, parser combinators make it possible to construct parsers dynamically, and first-class attribute grammars make it possible to define semantics in a compositional way. In this paper we show how, using a small example language and its extension, these techniques come together in constructing compilers out of a collection of pre-compiled, statically type-checked, possibly mutually dependent ``language-definition fragments''. This way of constructing a compiler brings syntax macros for free.

Paper: pdf

Package: SyntaxMacros