A Library of Literals, Expressions, Types, and Statements for Compositional Language Design

By: Arvid Butting, Robert Eikermann, Katrin Hölldobler, Nico Jansen, Bernhard Rumpe, Andreas Wortmann

Abstract

Many modeling languages share common concepts, such as types, expressions, statements, or literals. Nonethe- less, these essential language concerns are often developed again and again, independently, and with minor changes here and there. A well-designed and extensible library of such, tried-and-tested, language components can facilitate engineering new languages through their reuse. We utilize the powerful language composition techniques of the MontiCore language workbench to conceive such a library, present its components, and their rationale. This fosters language engineering in MontiCore and can inspire more efficient language engineering in the technological spaces of other language workbenches.

Keywords

Software Language Engineering; Language Reuse; Language Modularity

Cite as:

Arvid Butting, Robert Eikermann, Katrin Hölldobler, Nico Jansen, Bernhard Rumpe, Andreas Wortmann, “A Library of Literals, Expressions, Types, and Statements for Compositional Language Design”, Journal of Object Technology, Volume 19, no. 3 (October 2020), pp. 3:1-16, doi:10.5381/jot.2020.19.3.a4.