Towards Concrete Syntax Patterns for Logic-based Transformation Rules

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Abstract

Logic meta-programming in Prolog is a powerful way to express program analysis and transformation. However, its use can be difficult and error-prone because it requires programmers to know the meta-level representation of the analysed language and to think and express their analyses in terms of this low-level representation. In addition, the backtracking-based evaluation strategy of Prolog may lead to subtle semantic problems when used to express transformations of a logic database. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach, GenTL, a generic transformation language that combines logic-based Conditional Transformations (CTs) and concrete syntax patterns. This combination addresses the above problems while still offering the full expressive power of logic meta-programming. Compared to approaches based on other formalisms, the design of GenTL offers advantages in terms of composability and easy transformation interference analysis.

Keywords

Generic transformation rules
concrete syntax patterns
program analysis
GenTL
conditional transformations
logic meta-programming

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