Automatic Generation of Object-Oriented Type Checkers

Abstract—Type systems are aimed at preventing programming language constructions from having wrong behavior at runtime. Different formalisms are used to guarantee that a type system is well defined. However, the type systems implemented in commercial language processors (type checkers) do not commonly use tools that translate these formalisms into code. We propose a framework to facilitate the implementation of object-oriented type checkers, following widespread design patterns. A tool generates the specific implementation of a type checker, receiving a specification of the type system as its input. The generated code interacts with an API, accessible from the rest of the language processor implementation.

Index Terms—Type checker, compiler construction, design patterns, semantic analysis, language implementation.

The authors are with the Computer Science Department, University of Oviedo, Calvo Sotelo s/n, 33007, Oviedo, Spain (e-mail: ortin@uniovi.es, quirogajose@uniovi.es, garciarmiguel@uniovi.es).

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Cite: Francisco Ortin, Daniel Zapico, Jose Quiroga, and Miguel Garcia, "Automatic Generation of Object-Oriented Type Checkers," Lecture Notes on Software Engineering vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 288-293, 2014.