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by fmihaila 2852 days ago
For those writing language processors in Java, I highly recommend having a look at JastAdd [1]. It's a great framework for implementing semantic analysis using attribute grammars [2]. The tool automatically generates Java classes to represent ASTs, based on a high-level description (a CFG grammar) of the desired AST shape. You can use any Java-based parser as long as the AST it produces is constructed from those classes. That's only the starting point; the real power is in the excellent support for expressing attribute computation. It uses a high-level, lazy equational formalism extended by the programmer with custom logic, which is then turned into automatically-generated Java code. Compilers/interpreters written in JastAdd tend to be very well structured and easy to maintain. It's one of my all-time favourite libraries, actively maintained, and very well documented.

[1] http://jastadd.org/web/documentation/concept-overview.php

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_grammar

1 comments

And for Scala, there's Kiama https://bitbucket.org/inkytonik/kiama