2,501 research outputs found
Efficient Dynamic Access Analysis Using JavaScript Proxies
JSConTest introduced the notions of effect monitoring and dynamic effect
inference for JavaScript. It enables the description of effects with path
specifications resembling regular expressions. It is implemented by an offline
source code transformation.
To overcome the limitations of the JSConTest implementation, we redesigned
and reimplemented effect monitoring by taking advantange of JavaScript proxies.
Our new design avoids all drawbacks of the prior implementation. It guarantees
full interposition; it is not restricted to a subset of JavaScript; it is
self-maintaining; and its scalability to large programs is significantly better
than with JSConTest.
The improved scalability has two sources. First, the reimplementation is
significantly faster than the original, transformation-based implementation.
Second, the reimplementation relies on the fly-weight pattern and on trace
reduction to conserve memory. Only the combination of these techniques enables
monitoring and inference for large programs.Comment: Technical Repor
A Variant of Earley Parsing
The Earley algorithm is a widely used parsing method in natural language
processing applications. We introduce a variant of Earley parsing that is based
on a ``delayed'' recognition of constituents. This allows us to start the
recognition of a constituent only in cases in which all of its subconstituents
have been found within the input string. This is particularly advantageous in
several cases in which partial analysis of a constituent cannot be completed
and in general in all cases of productions sharing some suffix of their
right-hand sides (even for different left-hand side nonterminals). Although the
two algorithms result in the same asymptotic time and space complexity, from a
practical perspective our algorithm improves the time and space requirements of
the original method, as shown by reported experimental results.Comment: 12 pages, 1 Postscript figure, uses psfig.tex and llncs.st
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Formalizing graphical notations
The thesis describes research into graphical notations for software engineering, with a principal interest in ways of formalizing them. The research seeks to provide a theoretical basis that will help in designing both notations and the software tools that process them.
The work starts from a survey of literature on notation, followed by a review of techniques for formal description and for computational handling of notations. The survey concentrates on collecting views of the benefits and the problems attending notation use in software development; the review covers picture description languages, grammars and tools such as generic editors and visual programming environments. The main problem of notation is found to be a lack of any coherent, rigorous description methods. The current approaches to this problem are analysed as lacking in consensus on syntax specification and also lacking a clear focus on a defined concept of notated expression.
To address these deficiencies, the thesis embarks upon an exploration of serniotic, linguistic and logical theory; this culminates in a proposed formalization of serniosis in notations, using categorial model theory as a mathematical foundation. An argument about the structure of sign systems leads to an analysis of notation into a layered system of tractable theories, spanning the gap between expressive pictorial medium and subject domain. This notion of 'tectonic' theory aims to treat both diagrams and formulae together.
The research gives details of how syntactic structure can be sketched in a mathematical sense, with examples applying to software development diagrams, offering a new solution to the problem of notation specification. Based on these methods, the thesis discusses directions for resolving the harder problems of supporting notation design, processing and computer-aided generic editing. A number of future research areas are thereby opened up. For practical trial of the ideas, the work proceeds to the development and partial implementation of a system to aid the design of notations and editors. Finally the thesis is evaluated as a contribution to theory in an area which has not attracted a standard approach
Children as Models for Computers: Natural Language Acquisition for Machine Learning
International audienceThis paper focuses on a subfield of machine learning, the so- called grammatical inference. Roughly speaking, grammatical inference deals with the problem of inferring a grammar that generates a given set of sample sentences in some manner that is supposed to be realized by some inference algorithm. We discuss how the analysis and formalization of the main features of the process of human natural language acquisition may improve results in the area of grammatical inference
Ordered Context-Free Grammars Revisited
We continue our study of ordered context-free grammars, a grammar formalism
that places an order on the parse trees produced by the corresponding
context-free grammar. In particular, we simplify our previous definition of a
derivation of a string for a given ordered context-free grammar, and present a
parsing algorithm, using shared packed parse forests, with time complexity
O(n^4), where n is the length of the input string being parsed.Comment: In Proceedings NCMA 2023, arXiv:2309.0733
Evolution from the ground up with Amee – From basic concepts to explorative modeling
Evolutionary theory has been the foundation of biological research for about a century
now, yet over the past few decades, new discoveries and theoretical advances have rapidly
transformed our understanding of the evolutionary process. Foremost among them are
evolutionary developmental biology, epigenetic inheritance, and various forms of evolu-
tionarily relevant phenotypic plasticity, as well as cultural evolution, which ultimately led
to the conceptualization of an extended evolutionary synthesis. Starting from abstract
principles rooted in complexity theory, this thesis aims to provide a unified conceptual
understanding of any kind of evolution, biological or otherwise. This is used in the second
part to develop Amee, an agent-based model that unifies development, niche construction,
and phenotypic plasticity with natural selection based on a simulated ecology. Amee
is implemented in Utopia, which allows performant, integrated implementation and
simulation of arbitrary agent-based models. A phenomenological overview over Amee’s
capabilities is provided, ranging from the evolution of ecospecies down to the evolution
of metabolic networks and up to beyond-species-level biological organization, all of
which emerges autonomously from the basic dynamics. The interaction of development,
plasticity, and niche construction has been investigated, and it has been shown that while
expected natural phenomena can, in principle, arise, the accessible simulation time and
system size are too small to produce natural evo-devo phenomena and –structures. Amee thus can be used to simulate the evolution of a wide variety of processes
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