Abstract Syntax from Concrete Syntax

Abstract

Modem Software Engineering practice advocates the development of domain-specific specification languages to characterize formally the idioms of discourse and jargon of specific problem domains.With poorly-understood domains it is best to construct an abstract syntax to characterize the domain concepts and abstractions before developing a concrete syntax.Often, however, a good concrete syntax exists a priori: sometimes in sophisticated formal languages characterizing (often mathematical) domains but more often in miniature, legacy-code languages, sorely in need of reverse engineering.In such cases, it is necessary to derive an appropriate abstract syntax -or its first cousin, an object-oriented model -from the concrete syntax.This report describes a transformation process that produces a good abstract representation from a low-level concrete syntax specification.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{Wile:ICSE97,
  author    = {David S. Wile},
  title     = {Abstract Syntax from Concrete Syntax},
  booktitle = {ICSE},
  pages     = {472--480},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year      = {1997},
}

Abstract Syntax from Concrete Syntax

Abstract

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