mvermaat's compilers [12 articles]

Abstract

The goal of domain-specific languages (DSLs) is to increase the productivity of software engineers by abstracting from low-level boilerplate code. Introduction of DSLs in the software development process requires a smooth workflow for the production of DSLs themselves. This requires technology for designing and implementing DSLs, but also a methodology for using that technology. That is, a collection of guidelines, design patterns, and reusable DSL components that show developers how to tackle common language design and implementation issues. This paper presents ...

Abstract

This 320-page book treats parsing in its own right, in greater depth than is found in most computer science and linguistics books. It offers a clear, accessible, and thorough discussion of many different parsing techniques with their interrelations and applicabilities, including error recovery techniques. Unlike most books, it treats (almost) all parsing methods, not just the popular ones. See Preface + Introduction and/or Table of Contents for a quick impression. The book features a 48 page... ...

Abstract

This paper is a case study on the mechanical verification of a transfor- mation to continuation-passing style (CPS) by Dargaye and Leroy. First, the concepts of CPS and transformation to CPS are introduced. We then define source and target languages, and a CPS transformation between them which is proved to preserve semantics. We conclude with a small overview of the mechanization of CPS transformations. A detailed proof of the semantics preservation theorem is attached as an appendix. ...

Abstract

We present the notion of translation validation as a new approach to the verification of translators (compilers, code generators). Rather than proving in advance that the compiler always produces a target code which correctly implements the source code (compiler verification), each individual translation (i.e. a run of the compiler) is followed by a validation phase which verifies that the target code produced on this run correctly implements the submitted source program. Several ingredients... ...

Abstract

We describe a translation validation infrastructure for the GNU C compiler. During the compilation the infrastructure compares the intermediate form of the program before and after each compiler pass and verifies the preservation of semantics. We discuss a general framework that the optimizer can use to communicate to the validator what transformations were performed. Our implementation however does not rely on help from the optimizer and it is quite successful by using instead a few heuristics ... ...

Abstract

This book shows how continuation-passing style is used as an intermediate representation to perform optimizations and program transformations. Continuations can be used to compile most programming languages. The method is illustrated in a compiler for the programming language Standard ML. Prior knowledge of ML, however, is not necessary, as the author carefully explains each concept as it arises. This is the first book to show how concepts from the theory of programming languages can be applied to the production ...

Abstract

We present a certified compiler from the simply-typed lambda calculus to assembly language. The compiler is certified in the sense that it comes with a machine-checked proof of semantics preservation, performed with the Coq proof assistant. The compiler and the terms of its several intermediate languages are given dependent types that guarantee that only well-typed programs are representable. Thus, type preservation for each compiler pass follows without any significant "proofs" of the usual kind. Semantics preservation is proved based on denotational ...

Abstract

Transformation to continuation-passing style (CPS) is often performed by optimizing compilers for functional programming languages. As part of the development and proof of correctness of a compiler for the mini-ML functional language, we have mechanically verified the correctness of two CPS transformations for a call-by-value λ-calculus with n-ary functions, recursive functions, data types and pattern-matching. The transformations generalize Plotkin’s original call-by-value transformation and Danvy and Nielsen’s optimized transformation, respectively. We used the Coq proof assistant to formalize the transformations and conduct ...