Bücher von Robert Tennent

To construct a compiler for a modern higher-level programming languagel one needs to structure the translation to a machine-like intermediate language in a way that reflects the semantics of the language. little is said about such struc- turing in compiler texts that are intended to cover a wide variety of program- ming languages. More is said in the Iiterature on semantics-directed compiler construction [1] but here too the viewpoint is very general (though limited to 1 languages with a finite number of syntactic types). On the other handl there is a considerable body of work using the continuation-passing transformation to structure compilers for the specific case of call-by-value languages such as SCHEME and ML [21 3]. ln this paperl we will describe a method of structuring the translation of ALGOL-like languages that is based on the functor-category semantics devel- oped by Reynolds [4] and Oles [51 6]. An alternative approach using category theory to structure compilers is the early work of F. L. Morris [7]1 which anticipates our treatment of boolean expressionsl but does not deal with procedures. 2 Types and Syntax An ALGOL-like language is a typed lambda calculus with an unusual repertoire of primitive types. Throughout most of this paper we assume that the primi- tive types are comm(and) int(eger)exp(ression) int(eger)acc(eptor) int(eger)var(iable) I and that the set 8 of types is the least set containing these primitive types and closed under the binary operation -.

In 1959 John Backus presented a paper on a proposed international algebraic language which evolved into ALGOL 60. This set of two volumes aims to review the attempts over recent years to use programming languages based on ALGOL 60, using Backus' original document as an introduction.