research-article

Implementing a language with explicit assignment semantics

Authors:

Dimitri Racordon,

Didier BuchsAuthors Info & Claims

VMIL 2019: Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Virtual Machines and Intermediate Languages

Pages 12 - 21

https://doi.org/10.1145/3358504.3361227

Published: 22 October 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Anzen is a multi-paradigm programming language that aims to provide explicit and controllable assignment semantics. It is based on the observation that abstractions over memory management and data representation, as commonly adopted by contemporary programming languages, often transpire relics of the underlying memory model and lead to confusing assignment semantics in the presence of aliases. In response, Anzen’s goal is to offer a modern approach to programming, built on a sound and unambiguous semantics.This paper describes the implementation of a compiler for Anzen. Our implementation transpiles sources to an intermediate language inspired by the LLVM IR, designed to ease further analysis on Anzen’s statements. This intermediate representation is then consumed by a register-based virtual machine. We present the Anzen compiler’s architecture, introduce its intermediate language and describe the latter’s evaluation. Our work aims to set a reference implementation for future developments and extensions of the language.

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Cited By

Batdalov RNikiforova O(2021)Patterns for Assignment and Passing Objects Between Contexts in Programming LanguagesProceedings of the 26th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs10.1145/3489449.3489975(1-9)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3489449.3489975

Index Terms

Implementing a language with explicit assignment semantics
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Interpreters
      2. Runtime environments
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Data types and structures
      2. Language types
        Imperative languages

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cover image ACM Conferences

VMIL 2019: Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Virtual Machines and Intermediate Languages

October 2019

66 pages

ISBN:9781450369879

DOI:10.1145/3358504

General Chairs:
Daniele Bonetta,
Yu David Liu

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 22 October 2019

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SPLASH '19: 2019 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity

October 22, 2019

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Cited By

Batdalov RNikiforova O(2021)Patterns for Assignment and Passing Objects Between Contexts in Programming LanguagesProceedings of the 26th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs10.1145/3489449.3489975(1-9)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3489449.3489975

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