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Compiler construction using attribute grammars

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Published:01 June 1982Publication History
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Abstract

The adequacy of attribute grammars as a compiler writing tool is studied on the basis of the experiences on attribute grammars for Pascal and a subset of Euclid. A qualitative assessment of the grammars shows that the compiler oriented view in the design of an attribute grammar tends to make the grammar hard to understand. A design discipline is proposed to improve the comprehensibility of the grammar. Quantitative measurements of the automatically generated compilers suggest that an efficient compiler can be produced from an attribute grammar. To achieve this, a carefully optimized implementation of the compiler-compiler is required.

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          cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
          ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 17, Issue 6
          Proceedings of the 1982 SIGPLAN symposium on Compiler construction
          June 1982
          347 pages
          ISSN:0362-1340
          EISSN:1558-1160
          DOI:10.1145/872726
          Issue’s Table of Contents
          • cover image ACM Conferences
            SIGPLAN '82: Proceedings of the 1982 SIGPLAN symposium on Compiler construction
            June 1982
            357 pages
            ISBN:0897910745
            DOI:10.1145/800230

          Copyright © 1982 Authors

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          Association for Computing Machinery

          New York, NY, United States

          Publication History

          • Published: 1 June 1982

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