Memoized zipper-based attribute grammars and their higher order extension

Authors

Abstract

Attribute grammars are a powerfull, well-known formalism to implement and reason about programs which, by design, are conveniently modular. In this work we focus on a state of the art zipper-based embedding of classic attribute grammars and higher-order attribute grammars. We improve their execution performance through controlling attribute (re)evaluation by means of memoization techniques. We present the results of our optimizations by comparing their impact in various implementations of different, well-studied, attribute grammars and their Higher-Order extensions.

Keywords

Embedded domain specific languages, Zipper data structure, Memoization, Attribute grammars, Functional programming

Journal

Science of Computer Programming, November 2019

DOI