Using Visitor Patterns in Object-Oriented Action Semantics

Abstract: Object-Oriented Action Semantics is a semantic framework for the defi-nition of programming languages. The framework incorporates some object-oriented concepts to the Action Semantics formalism. Its main goal is to obtain more readable and reusable semantic specifications. ObjectOriented Action Semantics provides sup-port for the definition of syntax-independent specifications, due to the way its classes are written. In a previous work, a library of classes (called LFL) was developed to improve specification reuse and to provide a way to describe semantic concepts, inde-pendent from the syntax of the programming language. This paper aims to address some problematic aspects of LFL, and presents a case study, where a specification is built by using the Visitor Pattern technique. The use of this pattern allows a clear separation between the syntax of a programming language and its different semantic aspects. Key Words: formal semantics, action semantics, object-oriented specifications