Abstract

Action Semantics is a formal method of defining programming language semantics in which actions describe the manipulation of three entities: transients, bindings, and the store. Due to the high-level nature of Action Semantics, actions cannot be directly translated into efficient code in an Action Semantics-based compiler. However, by applying sort inference to an action, it is possible to transform it to a lowlevel action that can be translated into efficient code. This paper briefly introduces Action Semantics. The problem of Action Semantics-directed compilation is then demonstrated through an example. Finally, sort inference is applied to an action and it is subsequently transformed to an action more suitable for compilation.

Citations