Creating Textual Language Dialects Using Aspect-like Techniques

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel aspect-oriented approach for efficiently creating and supporting textual language dialects by defining syntactical modifications to parent languages, applicable across various language designs.

Contribution

It proposes using aspect-like techniques to define and transform grammars for dialect creation, offering a language-agnostic, uniform method.

Findings

Enables efficient creation of language dialects

Supports tools like compilers and IDEs for dialects

Provides a language-independent grammar transformation method

Abstract

Here we present a work aimed on efficiently creating textual language dialects and supporting tools for them (e.g. compiler front-ends, IDE support, pretty-printers, etc.). A dialect is a language which may be described with a (relatively small) set of changes to some other language (a parent language). For example we can consider SQL dialects used in DB-management systems. We propose to use aspects for grammars to define different features of the anguage and to transform grammars. A dialect is created by defining a syntactical spect which modifies the parent language. This technique is not dependent on any particular language design, AST structure or parsing technology and provides a uniform way for creating dialects, which extend or restrict languages.