Programming Language Specification and Prototyping Using the MAX System

The paper describes the MAX system, a tool for speci cation and prototyping of language processors. The MAX system is based on a rst{order framework generalizing attribute grammar like frameworks. It allows to refer to syntax tree nodes and \distant" attribute occurrences. Attributes may have tree nodes as values, so that global relations between distant tree nodes can be expressed. This enables more compact and readable speci cations for a wide class of complex problems. Within the presented framework, context conditions can be globally formulated by rst{order predicate formulae. The paper explains the fundamental semantical concepts of the system, shows its application to a small name analysis problem, and describes the main implementation issues. In particular, we present a powerful attribute evaluation algorithm that can handle attribute dependencies arising during evaluation time. Finally, we report on the experiences made by the system and compare it to other speci cation frameworks for language{based programming tool generation.