TXL: a rapid prototyping system for programming language dialects

A rapid prototyping system for extensions to an existing programming language is described. Such extensions could include language features or could introduce notation specific to a particular problem domain. The system consists of a dialect description language used to specify the syntax and semantics of extensions and a context-sensitive syntactic transducer that automatically implements the extensions by transforming source programs written using them to equivalent programs in the original unextended language. Because the transformer is context-sensitive, it is more powerful than traditional context-free preprocessors and extensible languages, and can be used to prototype language extensions involving significantly novel programming paradigms such as object-oriented programming.<>