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A survey of adaptable grammars

A survey of adaptable grammars A survey of adaptable grammars Henning Christiansen Roskilde University Centre P.O. Box 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark E-mail: henning@dat.ruc.dk This paper is a comment on two recent contributions to Sigplan Notices. In his paper, "The static semantics file", no. 25/4, Brian Meek discusses the relevance of the notion of "static semantics". The relation between a variable's declaration and the restrictions on its use, for example, is usually classified as static semantics. Meek finds the designation rather misleading since it is applied for concepts concerned with context-dependent syntax. The term "semantics" should properly only be used for aspects that have to do with real meaning, e.g., the association between program statements and their intended computation. Here I will show that this distinction between syntax and semantics can be made clearer using grammars which adapt themselves to the current program contexts. For example, declarations of new items can be described by adding new rules to the grammar and thus, within a given scope of a program, the set of valid phrases can be derived freely by means of the current set of grammar rules. This way, we get rid of some of those - - often quite complicated-- context constraints that http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png ACM SIGPLAN Notices Association for Computing Machinery

A survey of adaptable grammars

Christiansen, H.
ACM SIGPLAN Notices , Volume 25 (11) – Nov 1, 1990
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Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by ACM Inc.
ISSN
0362-1340
DOI
10.1145/101356.101357
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

A survey of adaptable grammars Henning Christiansen Roskilde University Centre P.O. Box 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark E-mail: henning@dat.ruc.dk This paper is a comment on two recent contributions to Sigplan Notices. In his paper, "The static semantics file", no. 25/4, Brian Meek discusses the relevance of the notion of "static semantics". The relation between a variable's declaration and the restrictions on its use, for example, is usually classified as static semantics. Meek finds the designation rather misleading since it is applied for concepts concerned with context-dependent syntax. The term "semantics" should properly only be used for aspects that have to do with real meaning, e.g., the association between program statements and their intended computation. Here I will show that this distinction between syntax and semantics can be made clearer using grammars which adapt themselves to the current program contexts. For example, declarations of new items can be described by adding new rules to the grammar and thus, within a given scope of a program, the set of valid phrases can be derived freely by means of the current set of grammar rules. This way, we get rid of some of those - - often quite complicated-- context constraints that

Journal

ACM SIGPLAN Notices – Association for Computing Machinery

Published: Nov 1, 1990

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