Paper Info
Title
Circular Expressions: Elimination of Static Environments
Abstract
Consider the connection between denotational semantics for a language with goto statements and flow diagrams for programs in such a language. The main point of interest is that the denotational semantics uses a recursively defined environment to give the meaning of labels, while a flow diagram merely has a jump to the appropriate program point. A simple reduction called indirection elimination strips away the environment from the denotational semantics and extracts an expression with cycles (circular expression) that is very close to the flow diagram of a program. The same idea applies to associating bodies with recursive procedures, or to any construct whose semantics is not wedded to the syntax. Circular expressions are offered as a useful data structure and conceptual device. Expressions with cycles are well defined mathematical objects — their semantics can be given by unfolding them into infinite structures that have been well studied. The practicality of the elimination of environments has been tested by constructing a trial implementation, which serves as the front end of a semantics directed compiler generator. The implementation takes a denotational semantics of a language and constructs a black box that maps programs in the language into an intermediate representation. The intermediate representation is a circular expression.
Year
DOI
Venue
1981
10.1007/3-540-10843-2_31
ICALP
Keywords
Field
DocType
data structure,front end,point of interest,intermediate representation
Data structure,Discrete mathematics,Expression (mathematics),Computer science,Denotational semantics,Compiler,Semantics,Recursion,Goto,Data flow diagram
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
2.35
14
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ravi Sethi122811029.21
Murray Hill214447.20