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27
The TXL Source Transformation Language
, 2005
"... TXL is a special-purpose programming language designed for creating, manipulating and rapidly prototyping language descriptions, tools and applications. TXL is designed to allow explicit programmer control over the interpretation, application, order and backtracking of both parsing and rewriting rul ..."
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Cited by 131 (36 self)
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TXL is a special-purpose programming language designed for creating, manipulating and rapidly prototyping language descriptions, tools and applications. TXL is designed to allow explicit programmer control over the interpretation, application, order and backtracking of both parsing and rewriting rules. Using first order functional programming at the higher level and term rewriting at the lower level, TXL provides for flexible programming of traversals, guards, scope of application and parameterized context. This flexibility has allowed TXL users to express and experiment with both new ideas in parsing, such as robust, island and agile parsing, and new paradigms in rewriting, such as XML markup, rewriting strategies and contextualized rules, without any change to TXL itself. This paper outlines the history, evolution and concepts of TXL with emphasis on its distinctive style and philosophy, and gives examples of its use in expressing and applying recent new paradigms in language processing.
Semi-automatic Grammar Recovery
- SOFTWARE—PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE
, 2001
"... We proposed a new approach for the construction of grammars and parsers for existing languages. The approach is both very powerful and simple. We provided a structured process and explained our methods in detail so that others can apply our ideas for their own grammar construction activities. We ill ..."
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Cited by 62 (8 self)
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We proposed a new approach for the construction of grammars and parsers for existing languages. The approach is both very powerful and simple. We provided a structured process and explained our methods in detail so that others can apply our ideas for their own grammar construction activities. We illustrated the proposed approach with a nontrivial case study. Using our process, we constructed in a few weeks a complete and correct VS COBOL II grammar specification for IBM mainframes. We not only constructed a parser for it, but also published a web-enabled grammar specification so that others can use this result to conveniently construct their own grammar-based tools for VS COBOL II, or derivatives.
TXL - A Language for Programming Language Tools and Applications
, 2004
"... TXL is a special-purpose programming language designed for creating, manipulating and rapidly prototyping language descriptions, tools and applications. TXL is designed to allow explicit programmer control over the interpretation, application, order and backtracking of both parsing and rewriting rul ..."
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Cited by 61 (10 self)
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TXL is a special-purpose programming language designed for creating, manipulating and rapidly prototyping language descriptions, tools and applications. TXL is designed to allow explicit programmer control over the interpretation, application, order and backtracking of both parsing and rewriting rules. Using first order functional programming at the higher level and term rewriting at the lower level, TXL provides for flexible programming of traversals, strategies, guards, scope of application and parameterized context. This flexibility has allowed TXL users to express and experiment with both new ideas in parsing, such as robust, island and agile parsing, and new paradigms in rewriting, such as XML markup, rewriting strategies and contextualized rules, without any change to TXL itself. In this paper I outline the history, evolution and concepts of TXL with emphasis on what makes it di#erent from other language manipulation tools, and give examples of its use in expressing and applying recent new paradigms in language processing.
Strategic Pattern Matching
- Rewriting Techniques and Applications (RTA'99
, 1999
"... Stratego is a language for the specification of transformation rules and strategies for applying them. The basic actions of transformations are matching and building instantiations of first-order term patterns. The language supports concise formulation of generic and data type-specific term traversa ..."
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Cited by 37 (7 self)
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Stratego is a language for the specification of transformation rules and strategies for applying them. The basic actions of transformations are matching and building instantiations of first-order term patterns. The language supports concise formulation of generic and data type-specific term traversals. One of the unusual features of Stratego is the separation of scope from matching, allowing sharing of variables through traversals. The combination of first-order patterns with strategies forms an expressive formalism for pattern matching. In this paper we discuss three examples of strategic pattern matching: (1) Contextual rules allow matching and replacement of a pattern at an arbitrary depth of a subterm of the root pattern. (2) Recursive patterns can be used to characterize concisely the structure of languages that form a restriction of a larger language. (3) Overlays serve to hide the representation of a language in another (more generic) language. These techniques are illustrated by...
Type Inference for COBOL Systems
, 1998
"... Types are a good starting point for various software reengineering tasks. Unfortunately, programs requiring reengineering most desperately are written in languages without an adequate type system (such as COBOL). To solve this problem, we propose a method of automated type inference for these langua ..."
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Cited by 35 (10 self)
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Types are a good starting point for various software reengineering tasks. Unfortunately, programs requiring reengineering most desperately are written in languages without an adequate type system (such as COBOL). To solve this problem, we propose a method of automated type inference for these languages. The main ingredients are that if variables are compared using some relational operator their types must be the same; likewise if an expression is assigned to a variable, the type of the expression must be a subtype of that of the variable. We present the formal type system and inference rules for this approach, show their effect on various real life COBOL fragments, describe the implementation of our ideas in a prototype type inference tool for COBOL, and discuss a number of applications.
Restructuring of COBOL/CICS Legacy Systems
"... We provide a strategy to restructure transaction processing systems. Such systems are core assets of most modern business operations, so their enhancement is crucial. Before large-scale renovation of transaction processing systems can take place, they need to be restructured. We argue that teleproce ..."
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Cited by 30 (13 self)
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We provide a strategy to restructure transaction processing systems. Such systems are core assets of most modern business operations, so their enhancement is crucial. Before large-scale renovation of transaction processing systems can take place, they need to be restructured. We argue that teleprocessing systems are unstructured by their nature. In this paper we approach the problems from a technical viewpoint and we report on the methods and tools that are necessary to bring structure in transaction systems.
Term Rewriting for Sale
, 1998
"... Term rewriting has a large potential for industrial applications, but these applications are always larger than one could ever dream of: huge sets of rewrite rules and gigantic terms to rewrite pose interesting challenges for implementors and theoreticians alike. We give a brief overview of the gene ..."
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Cited by 25 (17 self)
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Term rewriting has a large potential for industrial applications, but these applications are always larger than one could ever dream of: huge sets of rewrite rules and gigantic terms to rewrite pose interesting challenges for implementors and theoreticians alike. We give a brief overview of the generation of term-rewriting-based tools as done in the Asf+Sdf Meta-Environment and then we sketch two major applications of term rewriting: transformation of legacy COBOL systems and compilation of Asf+Sdf to C. Based on these experiences we suggest the study of topics that could further advance the use of term rewriting in industrial applications: persistent term databases, generalized LR parsing versus parallel term rewriting, and coordination languages versus strategy languages. It will turn out that we have an "alien" view on research in term rewriting: properties like confluence and termination are of very limited use when selling term rewriting to industry.
Development, Assessment, and Reengineering of Language Descriptions
- Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering
"... We discuss tools that aid in the development, the assessment and the reengineering of language descriptions. The assessment tools give an indication as to what is wrong with an existing language description, and give hints towards correction. From a correct and complete language description, it is p ..."
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Cited by 25 (10 self)
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We discuss tools that aid in the development, the assessment and the reengineering of language descriptions. The assessment tools give an indication as to what is wrong with an existing language description, and give hints towards correction. From a correct and complete language description, it is possible to generate a parser, a manual, and on-line documentation. The parser is geared towards reengineering purposes, but is also used to parse the examples that are contained in the documentation. The reengineered language description is a basic ingredient for a reengineering factory that can manipulate this language. We demonstrate our approach with a proprietary language for real time embedded software systems that is used in telecommunications industry. The described tool support can also be used to develop a language standard without syntax errors in the language description and its code examples. Categories and Subject Description: D.2.6 [Software Engineering ]: Programming Environm...
A Two-phase Process for Software Architecture Improvement
"... Software architecture is important for large systems in which it is the main means for, among other things, controlling complexity. Current ideas on software architectures were not available more than ten years ago. Software developed at that time has been deteriorating from an architectural point o ..."
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Cited by 24 (4 self)
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Software architecture is important for large systems in which it is the main means for, among other things, controlling complexity. Current ideas on software architectures were not available more than ten years ago. Software developed at that time has been deteriorating from an architectural point of view over the years, as a result of adaptations made in the software because of changing system requirements. Parts of the old software are nevertheless still being used in new product lines. To make changes in that software, like adding features, it is imperative to first adapt the software to accommodate those changes. Architecture improvement of existing software is therefore becoming more and more important. This paper describes a two-phase process for software architecture improvement, which is the synthesis of two research areas: the architecture visualisation and analysis area of Philips Research, and the transformation engines and renovation factories area of the University of Ams...
Generation of Software Renovation Factories from Compilers
- Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance
, 1999
"... When a compiler is designed carefully, it is possible to extract its grammar. We reengineer the extracted grammar to one that is geared towards reengineering. From this reengineering grammar we generate an architecture called a software renovation factory. This includes: generic analysis and transfo ..."
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Cited by 23 (9 self)
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When a compiler is designed carefully, it is possible to extract its grammar. We reengineer the extracted grammar to one that is geared towards reengineering. From this reengineering grammar we generate an architecture called a software renovation factory. This includes: generic analysis and transformation functionality and a native pattern language using the concrete syntax of the language for which the renovation is necessary. Moreover, we generate the grammar in HTML format so that reengineers can quickly understand the language. We applied our approach successfully to an exceptionally complex and large proprietary language. Our approach enables rapid development of software renovation factories. We believe that our approach can partly solve the lack of Year 2000 tool support for many languages. Categories and Subject Description: D.2.6 [Software Engineering ]: Programming Environments---Interactive; D.2.7 [Software Engineering]: Distribution and Maintenance--- Restructuring; D.3.4...
