Compilation as Metacomputation: Binding Time Separation in Modular Compilers (Extended Abstract)

This paper presents a modular and extensible style of language specification based on metacomputations. This style uses two monads to factor the static and dynamic parts of the specification, thereby staging the specification and achieving strong binding-time separation. Because metacomputations are defined in terms of monads, they can be constructed modularly and extensibly using monad transformers. A number of language constructs are specified: expressions, control-flow, imperative features, block structure, and higher-order functions and recursive bindings. Metacomputation-style specification lends itself to semantics-directed compilation, which we demonstrate by creating a modular compiler for a higher-order, imperative, Algol-like language