Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Implementing Multi-stage Languages Using ASTs, Gensym, and Reflection

  • Conference paper
Book cover Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2830))

Abstract

The paper addresses theoretical and practical aspects of implementing multi-stage languages using abstract syntax trees (ASTs), gensym, and reflection. We present an operational account of the correctness of this approach, and report on our experience with a bytecode compiler called MetaOCaml that is based on this strategy. Current performance measurements reveal interesting characteristics of the underlying OCaml compiler, and illustrate why this strategy can be particularly useful for implementing domain-specific languages in a typed, functional setting.

Funded by NSF ITR-0113569.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Bawden, A.: Quasiquotation in LISP. In: Danvy, O. (ed.) Proceedings of the Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Semantics-Based Program Manipulation, San Antonio, pp. 88–99. University of Aarhus, Dept. of Computer Science (1999) (invited talk)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Benaissa, Z.E.-A., Moggi, E., Taha, W., Sheard, T.: Logical modalities and multi-stage programming. In: Federated Logic Conference (FLoC) Satellite Workshop on Intuitionistic Modal Logics and Applications (IMLA) (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Calcagno, C., Moggi, E.: Adequacy and correctness for two-level languages (1998) (unpublished manuscript)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Calcagno, C., Moggi, E.: Multi-stage imperative languages: A conservative extension result. In: [41], pp. 92–107 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Calcagno, C., Moggi, E., Sheard, T.: Closed types for a safe imperative MetaML. Journal of Functional Programming (2003) (to appear)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Calcagno, C., Moggi, E., Taha, W.: Closed types as a simple approach to safe imperative multi-stage programming. In: Welzl, E., Montanari, U., Rolim, J.D.P. (eds.) ICALP 2000. LNCS, vol. 1853, pp. 25–36. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Clinger, W., Rees, J.: Macros that work. In: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), Orlando, pp. 155–162. ACM Press, New York (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Consel, C., Noël, F.: A general approach for run-time specialization and its application to C. In. In: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), St. Petersburg Beach, pp. 145–156 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Consel, C., Pu, C., Walpole, J.: Incremental specialization: The key to high performance, modularity, and portability in operating systems. In: Proceedings of the Symposium on Partial Evaluation and Semantics-Based Program Manipulation, New York, pp. 44–46. ACM Press, New York (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Danvy, O., Malmkjær, K.: Intensions and extensions in a reflective tower. In: Proceedings of the 1988 ACM Conference on LISP and Functional Programming, pp. 327–341. ACM Press, New York (1988)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Davies, R.: A temporal-logic approach to binding-time analysis. In: The Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 1996), New Brunswick, pp. 184–195. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Davies, R., Pfenning, F.: A modal analysis of staged computation. In: The Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 1996), St. Petersburg Beach, pp. 258–270 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Dybvig, R.K., Hieb, R., Bruggeman, C.: Syntactic abstraction in Scheme. Lisp and Symbolic Computation 5(4), 295–326 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Filinski, A.: A semantic account of type-directed partial evaluation. In: Nadathur, G. (ed.) PPDP 1999. LNCS, vol. 1702, pp. 378–395. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Filinski, A.: Normalization by evaluation for the computational lambda-calculus. In: Abramsky, S. (ed.) TLCA 2001. LNCS, vol. 2044, pp. 151–165. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Ganz, S., Sabry, A., Taha, W.: Macros as multi-stage computations: Typesafe, generative, binding macros in MacroML. In: The International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2001), Florence, Italy. ACM, New York (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Glück, R., Jørgensen, J.: Efficient multi-level generating extensions for program specialization. In: Swierstra, S.D., Hermenegildo, M. (eds.) PLILP 1995. LNCS, vol. 982, pp. 259–278. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Glück, R., Jørgensen, J.: Fast binding-time analysis for multi-level specialization. In: Bjorner, D., Broy, M., Pottosin, I.V. (eds.) PSI 1996. LNCS, vol. 1181, pp. 261–272. Springer, Heidelberg (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Glück, R., Nakashige, R., Zöchling, R.: Binding-time analysis applied to mathematical algorithms. In: Doležal, J., Fidler, J. (eds.) System Modelling and Optimization, pp. 137–146. Chapman & Hall, Boca Raton (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Gomard, C.K., Jones, N.D.: A partial evaluator for untyped lambda calculus. Journal of Functional Programming 1(1), 21–69 (1991)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  21. Hornof, L., Jim, T.: Certifying compilation and run-time code generation. Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation 12(4), 337–375 (1999)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Jones, N.D., Gomard, C.K., Sestoft, P.: Partial Evaluation and Automatic Program Generation. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1993)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  23. Jones, N.D., Sestoft, P., Sondergraard, H.: An experiment in partial evaluation: The generation of a compiler generator. In: Jouannaud, J.-P. (ed.) RTA 1985. LNCS, vol. 202, pp. 124–140. Springer, Heidelberg (1985)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Keppel, D., Eggers, S.J., Henry, R.R.: A case for runtime code generation. Tech. Rep. 91-11-04, University of Washington (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Kolhlbecker, E.E.: Syntactic Extensions in the Programming Language Lisp. PhD thesis, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Leroy, X.: Objective Caml (2000), Available from http://caml.inria.fr/ocaml/

  27. Malmkjær, K.: On some semantic issues in the reflective tower. In: Schmidt, D.A., Main, M.G., Melton, A.C., Mislove, M.W. (eds.) MFPS 1989. LNCS, vol. 442, pp. 229–246. Springer, Heidelberg (1990)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  28. Masuhara, H., Yonezawa, A.: Run-time bytecode specialization. In: Danvy, O., Filinski, A. (eds.) PADO 2001. LNCS, vol. 2053, p. 138. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  29. MetaOCaml: A compiled, type-safe multi-stage programming language (2003), Available online from http://www.cs.rice.edu/~taha/MetaOCaml/

  30. Moggi, E.: A categorical account of two-level languages. In: Mathematics Foundations of Program Semantics, Elsevier Science, Amsterdam (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Moggi, E.: Functor categories and two-level languages. In: Nivat, M. (ed.) FOSSACS 1998. LNCS, vol. 1378, p. 211. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  32. Moggi, E., Taha, W., Benaissa, Z.E.-A., Sheard, T.: An idealized MetaML: Simpler, and more expressive. In: Swierstra, S.D. (ed.) ESOP 1999. LNCS, vol. 1576, pp. 193–207. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  33. Multi-stage programming (2003), http://www.cs.rice.edu/~taha/teaching/02F/511

  34. Noël, F., Hornof, L., Consel, C., Lawall, J.L.: Automatic, templatebased run-time specialization: Implementation and experimental study. In: Proceedings of the 1998 International Conference on Computer Languages, pp. 132–142. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Oregon Graduate Institute Technical Reports. P.O. Box 91000, Portland, OR 97291-1000,USA, Last viewed (August 1999), Available online, from ftp://cse.ogi.edu/pub/tech-reports/README.html

  36. Pu, C., Walpole, J.: A study of dynamic optimization techniques: Lessons and directions in kernel design. Tech. Rep. CSE-93-007, Oregon Graduate Institute (1993), Available from [35]

    Google Scholar 

  37. Smith, B.C.: Reflection and Semantics in a Procedural Language. PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1982)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Smith, B.C.: Reflection and semantics in LISP. In: ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, pp. 23–35 (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  39. Smith, F., Grossman, D., Morrisett, G., Hornof, L., Jim, T.: Compiling for template-based run-time code generation. Journal of Functional Programming (2002) ( to appear)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Taha, W.: Multi-Stage Programming: Its Theory and Applications. PhD thesis, Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology (1999); Available from [35]

    Google Scholar 

  41. Taha, W. (ed.): Semantics, Applications, and Implementation of Program Generation. LNCS, vol. 1924. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  42. Taha, W.: A sound reduction semantics for untyped CBN multi-stage computation. Or, the theory of MetaML is non-trivial. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Semantics-Based Program Maniplation (PEPM), Boston. ACM Press, New York (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  43. Taha, W., Benaissa, Z.-E.-A., Sheard, T.: Multi-stage programming: Axiomatization and type-safety. In: Larsen, K.G., Skyum, S., Winskel, G. (eds.) ICALP 1998. LNCS, vol. 1443, pp. 918–929. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  44. Taha, W., Makholm, H., Hughes, J.: Tag elimination and Jones-optimality. In: Danvy, O., Filinski, A. (eds.) PADO 2001. LNCS, vol. 2053, pp. 257–275. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  45. Taha, W., Nielsen, M.F.: Environment classifiers. In: The Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 2003), New Orleans (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  46. Taha, W., Sheard, T.: Multi-stage programming with explicit annotations. In: Proceedings of the Symposium on Partial Evaluation and Semantic-Based Program Manipulation (PEPM), Amsterdam, pp. 203–217. ACM Press, New York (1997)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  47. Taha, W., Sheard, T.: MetaML and multi-stage programming with explicit annotations. Tech. Rep. CSE-99-007, Department of Computer Science, Oregon Graduate Institute (1999); Extended version of [46], Available from [35]

    Google Scholar 

  48. Taha, W., Sheard, T.: MetaML: Multi-stage programming with explicit annotations. Theoretical Computer Science 248, 1–2 (2000); Revision of [47]

    Google Scholar 

  49. Thibault, S., Consel, C., Lawall, J.L., Marlet, R., Muller, G.: Static and dynamic program compilation by interpreter specialization. Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation 13(3), 161–178 (2000)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Imperial College London, UK

    Cristiano Calcagno

  2. Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Walid Taha

  3. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Liwen Huang

  4. INRIA, Roquencourt, France

    Xavier Leroy

Authors
  1. Cristiano Calcagno
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Walid Taha
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Liwen Huang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Xavier Leroy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Carnegie Mellon University,  

    Frank Pfenning

  2. Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Oregon, OR 97403-1202, Eugene, USA

    Yannis Smaragdakis

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Calcagno, C., Taha, W., Huang, L., Leroy, X. (2003). Implementing Multi-stage Languages Using ASTs, Gensym, and Reflection. In: Pfenning, F., Smaragdakis, Y. (eds) Generative Programming and Component Engineering. GPCE 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2830. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39815-8_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39815-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-20102-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39815-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation