Recovering Grammar Relationships for the Java Language Specification

Status

Published by IEEE in Proceedings of SCAM 2009

Authors

Ralf Lämmel and Vadim Zaytsev

Abstract

We describe a completed effort to recover the relationships between all the grammars that occur in the different versions of the Java Language Specification (JLS). The relationships are represented as grammar transformations that capture all accidental or intended differences between the JLS grammars. This process is mechanized and it is driven by simple measures of nominal or structural differences between any pair of grammars involved. Our work suggests a form of consistency management for the JLS in particular, and language specifications in general.

Bibtex entry

@inproceedings{JLS,
 author = "Ralf L{\"a}mmel and Vadim Zaytsev",
 title = "{Recovering Grammar Relationships for the Java Language Specification}",
 booktitle = "Ninth IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation",
 year = 2009,
 month = sep,
 publisher = "IEEE",
 pages = "178--186"
}

Downloads and links

• Final paper: [.pdf] (published)
• Outdated version 2: [.pdf] (submitted to ICMT 2009)
• Outdated version 1: [.pdf] (submitted to CSMR 2009)
• Introduction paper to grammar convergence

History

• 21 September 2009 -- Presentation
• 26 June 2009 -- Final (minor) revision
• 02 June 2009 -- SCAM 2009 notification
• 06 May 2009 -- Published major revision; resubmission
• 21 March 2008 -- ICMT 2009 notification
• 08 February 2009 -- Published major revision; resubmission
• 12 December 2008 -- Waive short-paper offer
• 08 December 2008 -- CSMR 2009 notification
• 30 October 2008 -- Website created and linked
• 24 October 2008 -- Submitted for publication