Programming Languages: Concepts and Implementation


Book Description

Programming Languages: Concepts and Implementation teaches language concepts from two complementary perspectives: implementation and paradigms. It covers the implementation of concepts through the incremental construction of a progressive series of interpreters in Python, and Racket Scheme, for purposes of its combined simplicity and power, and assessing the differences in the resulting languages.




Programming Language Concepts


Book Description

This book uses a functional programming language (F#) as a metalanguage to present all concepts and examples, and thus has an operational flavour, enabling practical experiments and exercises. It includes basic concepts such as abstract syntax, interpretation, stack machines, compilation, type checking, garbage collection, and real machine code. Also included are more advanced topics on polymorphic types, type inference using unification, co- and contravariant types, continuations, and backwards code generation with on-the-fly peephole optimization. This second edition includes two new chapters. One describes compilation and type checking of a full functional language, tying together the previous chapters. The other describes how to compile a C subset to real (x86) hardware, as a smooth extension of the previously presented compilers.The examples present several interpreters and compilers for toy languages, including compilers for a small but usable subset of C, abstract machines, a garbage collector, and ML-style polymorphic type inference. Each chapter has exercises. Programming Language Concepts covers practical construction of lexers and parsers, but not regular expressions, automata and grammars, which are well covered already. It discusses the design and technology of Java and C# to strengthen students’ understanding of these widely used languages.




Design Concepts in Programming Languages


Book Description

Key ideas in programming language design and implementation explained using a simple and concise framework; a comprehensive introduction suitable for use as a textbook or a reference for researchers. Hundreds of programming languages are in use today—scripting languages for Internet commerce, user interface programming tools, spreadsheet macros, page format specification languages, and many others. Designing a programming language is a metaprogramming activity that bears certain similarities to programming in a regular language, with clarity and simplicity even more important than in ordinary programming. This comprehensive text uses a simple and concise framework to teach key ideas in programming language design and implementation. The book's unique approach is based on a family of syntactically simple pedagogical languages that allow students to explore programming language concepts systematically. It takes as premise and starting point the idea that when language behaviors become incredibly complex, the description of the behaviors must be incredibly simple. The book presents a set of tools (a mathematical metalanguage, abstract syntax, operational and denotational semantics) and uses it to explore a comprehensive set of programming language design dimensions, including dynamic semantics (naming, state, control, data), static semantics (types, type reconstruction, polymporphism, effects), and pragmatics (compilation, garbage collection). The many examples and exercises offer students opportunities to apply the foundational ideas explained in the text. Specialized topics and code that implements many of the algorithms and compilation methods in the book can be found on the book's Web site, along with such additional material as a section on concurrency and proofs of the theorems in the text. The book is suitable as a text for an introductory graduate or advanced undergraduate programming languages course; it can also serve as a reference for researchers and practitioners.




Principles of Programming Languages


Book Description

In-depth case studies of representative languages from five generations of programming language design (Fortran, Algol-60, Pascal, Ada, LISP, Smalltalk, and Prolog) are used to illustrate larger themes."--BOOK JACKET.




Implementing Programming Languages


Book Description

Implementing a programming language means bridging the gap from the programmer's high-level thinking to the machine's zeros and ones. If this is done in an efficient and reliable way, programmers can concentrate on the actual problems they have to solve, rather than on the details of machines. But understanding the whole chain from languages to machines is still an essential part of the training of any serious programmer. It will result in a more competent programmer, who will moreover be able to develop new languages. A new language is often the best way to solve a problem, and less difficult than it may sound. This book follows a theory-based practical approach, where theoretical models serve as blueprint for actual coding. The reader is guided to build compilers and interpreters in a well-understood and scalable way. The solutions are moreover portable to different implementation languages. Much of the actual code is automatically generated from a grammar of the language, by using the BNF Converter tool. The rest can be written in Haskell or Java, for which the book gives detailed guidance, but with some adaptation also in C, C++, C#, or OCaml, which are supported by the BNF Converter. The main focus of the book is on standard imperative and functional languages: a subset of C++ and a subset of Haskell are the source languages, and Java Virtual Machine is the main target. Simple Intel x86 native code compilation is shown to complete the chain from language to machine. The last chapter leaves the standard paths and explores the space of language design ranging from minimal Turing-complete languages to human-computer interaction in natural language.




Concepts in Programming Languages


Book Description

A comprehensive undergraduate textbook covering both theory and practical design issues, with an emphasis on object-oriented languages.




Crafting Interpreters


Book Description

Despite using them every day, most software engineers know little about how programming languages are designed and implemented. For many, their only experience with that corner of computer science was a terrifying "compilers" class that they suffered through in undergrad and tried to blot from their memory as soon as they had scribbled their last NFA to DFA conversion on the final exam. That fearsome reputation belies a field that is rich with useful techniques and not so difficult as some of its practitioners might have you believe. A better understanding of how programming languages are built will make you a stronger software engineer and teach you concepts and data structures you'll use the rest of your coding days. You might even have fun. This book teaches you everything you need to know to implement a full-featured, efficient scripting language. You'll learn both high-level concepts around parsing and semantics and gritty details like bytecode representation and garbage collection. Your brain will light up with new ideas, and your hands will get dirty and calloused. Starting from main(), you will build a language that features rich syntax, dynamic typing, garbage collection, lexical scope, first-class functions, closures, classes, and inheritance. All packed into a few thousand lines of clean, fast code that you thoroughly understand because you wrote each one yourself.




Programming Language Design Concepts


Book Description

Explains the concepts underlying programming languages, and demonstrates how these concepts are synthesized in the major paradigms: imperative, OO, concurrent, functional, logic and with recent scripting languages. It gives greatest prominence to the OO paradigm. Includes numerous examples using C, Java and C++ as exmplar languages Additional case-study languages: Python, Haskell, Prolog and Ada Extensive end-of-chapter exercises with sample solutions on the companion Web site Deepens study by examining the motivation of programming languages not just their features




Language Implementation Patterns


Book Description

Learn to build configuration file readers, data readers, model-driven code generators, source-to-source translators, source analyzers, and interpreters. You don't need a background in computer science--ANTLR creator Terence Parr demystifies language implementation by breaking it down into the most common design patterns. Pattern by pattern, you'll learn the key skills you need to implement your own computer languages. Knowing how to create domain-specific languages (DSLs) can give you a huge productivity boost. Instead of writing code in a general-purpose programming language, you can first build a custom language tailored to make you efficient in a particular domain. The key is understanding the common patterns found across language implementations. Language Design Patterns identifies and condenses the most common design patterns, providing sample implementations of each. The pattern implementations use Java, but the patterns themselves are completely general. Some of the implementations use the well-known ANTLR parser generator, so readers will find this book an excellent source of ANTLR examples as well. But this book will benefit anyone interested in implementing languages, regardless of their tool of choice. Other language implementation books focus on compilers, which you rarely need in your daily life. Instead, Language Design Patterns shows you patterns you can use for all kinds of language applications. You'll learn to create configuration file readers, data readers, model-driven code generators, source-to-source translators, source analyzers, and interpreters. Each chapter groups related design patterns and, in each pattern, you'll get hands-on experience by building a complete sample implementation. By the time you finish the book, you'll know how to solve most common language implementation problems.




Programming Language Explorations


Book Description

Programming Language Explorations is a tour of several modern programming languages in use today. The book teaches fundamental language concepts using a language-by-language approach. As each language is presented, the authors introduce new concepts as they appear, and revisit familiar ones, comparing their implementation with those from languages seen in prior chapters. The goal is to present and explain common theoretical concepts of language design and usage, illustrated in the context of practical language overviews. Twelve languages have been carefully chosen to illustrate a wide range of programming styles and paradigms. The book introduces each language with a common trio of example programs, and continues with a brief tour of its basic elements, type system, functional forms, scoping rules, concurrency patterns, and sometimes, metaprogramming facilities. Each language chapter ends with a summary, pointers to open source projects, references to materials for further study, and a collection of exercises, designed as further explorations. Following the twelve featured language chapters, the authors provide a brief tour of over two dozen additional languages, and a summary chapter bringing together many of the questions explored throughout the text. Targeted to both professionals and advanced college undergraduates looking to expand the range of languages and programming patterns they can apply in their work and studies, the book pays attention to modern programming practice, covers cutting-edge languages and patterns, and provides many runnable examples, all of which can be found in an online GitHub repository. The exploration style places this book between a tutorial and a reference, with a focus on the concepts and practices underlying programming language design and usage. Instructors looking for material to supplement a programming languages or software engineering course may find the approach unconventional, but hopefully, a lot more fun.