Language Design and Implementation by Selection

This paper demonstrates that design and implementation of languages for a specific domain can be done on a very high level of abstraction: elements and properties of a language are composed mainly by simple yes/no decisions. Consistency and completeness of the decisions are automatically checked. An implementation of the chosen language is obtained by selecting combinable specification components according to the user decisions and then feeding them into the language implementation system Eli. This approach is especially useful for designers of domain specific languages who usually have to deal with languages that have to be revised quite frequently and who normally do not have deep knowledge in the field of languages design and implementation. 1 Introduction When studying a programming language or a language for a specific application domain one soon recognizes whether it is well designed, e.g. program objects and their properties are well chosen, they fit well to the operations defi..