Expressing Structural Properties as Language Costructs

摘要

A program should document its organization and decisios about the programming process. Since the programmer's thinking about programming and program organization continually evolves, languages inevitably prove unable to state thee decisions in a precise and adequate fashion. Macro systems could provide a convenient way to extend a language with such statements, if they had more structure than traditional C-and Lisp-style macros provide. WIth our system, McMicMac, designers cn express a variety of specifications as language ocnstructs, including program representations of design patterns, high-level recursive programming operators, and collaboration-based design mechanisms. Unlike traditional macro systems, McmicMac offersa simple yet powerfu means for describing specifications, prevents unintentional name clashes, provides feedbackin terms of the programmer's source, and has modular mechanisms for managing speicifications. We have implemented and used McMicMac to define several groups of extensions.