Attribute Grammar Applications in Prototyping LOTOS Tools

Abstract

What is the practical applicability of attribute grammars? As we show in this paper, attribute grammars are at least good enough for the prototyping of fully functional interactive tools. Going from a definition of a language and the functionality of its tools to an attribute grammar is a discipline in need of a systematic approach, for which we give some initial material. As is inevitable when a system is extensively used (in our case the Cornell Synthesizer Generator), this paper also proposes extensions to the attribute grammar formalism and its supporting systems. 1 Introduction This paper represents, in some way, a view from the trenches. How we prototyped tools contributing to a specification environment for LOTOS is the main topic here. Attribute grammars were chosen because they promised to be a good prototyping approach to language based software development, and the close relation between attribute grammars and the description of tool functions helps ensure the correctness of..