A Functional Semantics of Attribute Grammars

  • Authors:
  • Kevin Backhouse

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • TACAS '02 Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

A definition of the semantics of attribute grammars is given, using the lambda calculus. We show how this semantics allows us to prove results about attribute grammars in a calculational style. In particular, we give a new proof of Chirica and Martin's result [6], that the attribute values can be computed by a structural recursion over the tree. We also derive a new definedness test, which encompasses the traditional closure and circularity tests. The test is derived by abstract interpretation.