Metacasanova: an optimized meta-compiler for domain-specific languages
Authors: 
Francesco Di Giacomo, Mohamed Abbadi, 
Agostino Cortesi, Pieter Spronck, Giuseppe MaggioreAuthors Info & Claims
Pages 232 - 243
Abstract
Domain-Specific Languages (DSL's) offer language-level abstractions that General-Purpose Languages do not offer, thus speeding up the implementation of the solution of problems within a specific domain. Developers have the choice of developing a DSL by building an interpreter/compiler for it, which is a hard and time-consuming task, or embedding it in a host language, thus speeding up the development process but losing several advantages that having a dedicated compiler might bring. In this work we present a meta-compiler called Metacasanova, whose meta-language is based on operational semantics. Then, we propose a language extension with functors and modules that allows to embed the type system of a language definition inside the meta-type system of Metacasanova and improves the performance of manipulating data structures at run-time. Our results show that Metacasanova dramatically reduces the code lines required to develop a compiler, and that the running time of the Meta-program is improved by embedding the host language type system in the meta-type system with the use of functors in the meta-language.
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Information
Published In
October 2017
267 pages
ISBN:9781450355254
DOI:10.1145/3136014
- General Chair:
- Benoit Combemale,
- Program Chairs:
- Marjan Mernik,
- Bernhard Rumpe
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Published: 23 October 2017
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