Abstract syntax driven language development: Defining language semantics through aspects

Abstract

The paper presents an approach for defining a computer language driven by a language's abstract syntax. The whole process of language specification including abstract syntax, concrete syntax and semantics definition is explained. Particular emphasis is put on language semantics definition and two approaches are introduced in detail - via annotations and aspects. For this purpose, as the main example used throughout the paper, the DESK language has been selected. A simple approach to semantics definition through semantic methods in the language model is presented. The paper continues with more advanced semantics definition through aspects. As a proof of concept, a short description of the YAJCo experimental research parser generator is given. Copyright 2010 ACM.