Programming Languages: Design and Implementation
Terrence W. Pratt
Prentice Hall
20 years old, but still extremely usefull.
Should get the 4th edition: ISBN: 0-13-027678-2
Chapter 1: Study of languages (what makes a language 'good')
- Clarity, simplicity, and unity of language concept.
- Everything is a 'variable'
- Clarity of program syntax
- Different things should look different
Notation of simple actions should be short
- Naturalness for the application
- Ocean is meant to write OSs
- Support for abstraction
- Allow types, functions, and OO, but with controlled 'weight'
- Ease of program verification
- Keep syntax and semantics simple
Strong type checking
Ease of allocation management
- Program environment
- TODO: Linkers (to other languages), editors, debuggers
- Portability
- Allow clear distinction between portable and non portable code
- Cost of use
- Have both an interpreter and a compiler, compile fast or efficient
Ocean doesn't have to be 'scriptable', but it would be nice
Maintenance...
Chapter 2: Language Processors (what is the Virtual Machine)
- Basic memory model
- Flat array of Bytes
- Floating points
- IEEE-754: can support NaN/Inf
- Memory model
- Stack, code-section (also const section), data-section, heap
- Binding
- 'Early', but with support for simulated 'late' binding.
Chapter 3: Elementary Data Types
- Primitive:
- Bit, Byte, QuartWord, HalfWord, Word, DoubleWord, QuadWord, Pointer,
ShortFloat, LongFloat
(packed-) Struct, Union, Array
- Standard:
- Class, String (utf8), Integer, Float, Boolean, Relation
- Xxx:
- Co-Routines, closures, delegates
- Threads:
- Our, Semaphores, Critical Sections
- Exceptions:
- Catch, Throw
- 'Coercion' (automatic conversion)
- We won't do any coercion
- Is an assignemnt a 'function' or a 'procedure'?
- Assignment returns assigned value
- Initialization of predefined complex structures is a good thing.
- Literals have no meaning: a type or class should indicate that it can
handle it and should do its own conversion.
So, what about deciding which type should handle it when multiple
functions could match...
Don't: just flag as ambigue and force user to
decide.
- ?
- Most functions work on implicit arrays: some arguments may repeat.
- What about: subranges, enumerations, array indexing by subrange or
enumeration
- ...
- Can how a type is shown be bound to how it is stores/used?
- ...
- What character set is used?
- Ocean will use UTF-8, period.
- ...
- Code is an elementary (const) datatype
- ...
- Vars/Objects may have compile time 'restrictions' which can be
changed/set/reset by certain functions
Chapter 4: Structured Data Types
- Supported data structures
- Data structures can be:
- Fixed in number or variable (or with some upper limit)
- Identical type throughout (homogeneous) or variance (heterogeneous)
- Selected by position, unique key (compile or runtime), or ...
- Speed of insertion/removal, selection, creation/deletion
- Element dependence, 'ownership'/lifetime of the elements
- Variant records: free union (like C) or discriminated-union (like ada)
- Both
- Is a string an elementary data type? RegExp? LValue?
- To be decided
- Stacks, Queues, Trees, Directed graph, Property Lists (or Hashes), Sets
- To be decided
- I/O lifetime > program
- To be decided
- Also
- What about fn's working on a whole array/whatever
Packed support?
Chapter 5: Subprograms and programmer defined Data Types
- Subroutine activation record
- Is a real data object?
- When are types the same?
- ?
Chapter 6: X
Chapter 7: X
Chapter 8: Storage Management
Chapter 9: Syntax and Translation
Chapter 10: Operating and Programming Environments
- Batch
- ...
- Interactive
- ...
- Embedded (also Kernels)
- ...
- Programming environments
- Do not fall in the trap of older systems: current systems have ample
resources
Help big projects by good version/revision management
- Testing and debugging
- trace a variable, assertions, pre and post conditions
Chapter 11: Theoretical Models
- Syntax definition
- A variation on BNF, actually one of the smaller problems
- Efficient parsing
- Very little context sensitivity in the syntaa, Should have a xxx parser
- Semantics definition
- Prose for now, should read on techniques: operational, functional/denotational, and/or axiomatic
- Prove correctness or static analysis
- ...