Program translation via abstraction and reimplementation

Author

Waters, Richard C.

Author_Institution

Artificial Intelligence Lab., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

14

Issue

8

fYear

1988

fDate

8/1/1988 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1207

Lastpage

1228

Abstract

An abstraction-and-reimplementation paradigm is presented in which the source program is first analyzed in order to obtain a programming-language-independent abstract understanding of the computation performed by the program as a whole. The program is then reimplemented in the target language based on this understanding. The key to this approach is the abstract understanding obtained. It allows the translator to benefit from an appreciation of the global features of the source program without being distracted by what are considered irrelevant details. Knowledge-based translation via abstraction and reimplementation is described as one of the goals of the Programmer´s Apprentice project. A translator which translates Cobol programs into Hibol (a very-high-level business data processing language) has been constructed. A computer which generates extremely efficient PDP-11 object code for Pascal programs has been designed

Keywords

COBOL; Pascal; data structures; expert systems; program compilers; program interpreters; Cobol; Hibol; PDP-11 object code; Pascal programs; Programmer´s Apprentice; abstract understanding; business data processing language; compilers; data structures; knowledge based system; reimplementation; translator; Artificial intelligence; Data processing; Helium; Performance analysis; Program processors; Prototypes; Writing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0098-5589

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/32.7629

Filename

7629