Xiaoqing Wu

Conquer Compiler Complexity: Component-based Language Implementation with Object-oriented Syntax and Aspect-oriented Semantics Xiaoqing Wu

With an aim to address the modularity problems in language implementations, this thesis presents a new language implementation formalism and archetype that improves the modularity in compiler construction in a two dimensional manner. Structure wise, a new parsing algorithm called Component-based LR parsing is utilized to decompose a language implementation into executable components at the byte-code level, which decreases the complexity of building a large language by constructing a set of smaller languages; Function wise, the framework employs object-oriented and aspect-oriented programming paradigms to describe syntax and semantic entities separately, which facilitates Separation of Concerns by isolating syntax and semantics as well as semantic phases themselves into different modules. The techniques in these two dimensions work in a coherent manner, producing a solution that can solve both modularization obstacles introduced above. Consequently, the framework increases the comprehensibility, reusability, changeability, extendibility and independent development ability of both syntax and semantics specification with less development workload required from compiler designers.