Anders Bondorf
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Index Terms
- Compiling actions by partial evaluation
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Reviews
Herbert G. Mayer
For researchers and developers interested in compiler generation based on action semantics, Bondorf and Palsberg present fascinating material; I only wish more detail had been offered. The authors have advanced the state of the art of compiler generation by obtaining an action compiler via partial evaluation of an action interpreter. Their method is simpler than the method employed in two other instances cited in the paper. Surprisingly, the described action compiler produces Scheme, yet the emitted code runs as fast as that generated by other action compilers that produce C or machine code. This suggests a potential for great future advances. The authors argue convincingly that action semantics is a better basis for semantics-directed compiler generation than denotation semantics. The paper progresses from general topics to specifics and starts by explaining the essence of action semantics. Section 3 outlines the action interpreter, written in Scheme, while section 4 describes how binding times were improved to increase execution speed. The remaining sections analyze the compiler's performance and offer ideas for future work. The appendix is unusually long and consists mainly of the Scheme listing of the action interpreter. A few parts of the paper remain unclear, largely because of the author's reliance on Scheme source code. Starting with section 3, the level of detail of the discussion sinks to nitty-gritty references to the appended Scheme code, yet only readers who understand Scheme and are familiar with the context will be able to follow it. Also, a speedup factor of five used in the section on performance evaluation remains somewhat mysterious; a paragraph later, the factor is discounted again in another comparison. Despite these minor shortcomings (and a few typos), the paper is a treasure. The work is fascinating. These barely five pages of text grant a small glimpse into a world that may be the beginning of a new way to generate compilers automatically, though it is clear that the road may be long. Another significant research goal is the early focus on correctness proofs, something not even considered in most current, handcrafted compilers. This paper is a must-read for anyone interested in the automatic generation of compilers that are provably correct. Since it is so short, however, the references, including Palsbe rg's Ph.D. thesis, may be even more significant for anyone wishing to participate in this great adventure.
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