Higher Order Attribute Grammars: A Merge between Functional and Object OrientedProgramming

摘要

Using incrementally evaluated attribute grammars as a programming languageentails the advantages of both the functional programming style and the object oriented programming style. On the one hand there is a complete absence of the need to explicitly schedule computations in order to maintain functional dependencies between data, whereas on the other hand the underlying syntax trees being edited, capture the concept of a state. In the paper the authors identify the underlying principles of the dual view and propose extensions to the standard attribute grammar formalisms. A delegation mechanism is introduced in order to deal with the user interface management part of incrementally evaluated attribute grammars. Finally, they discuss the use of structure sharing in the efficient implementation of the proposed extensions.