Rapid prototyping of concurrent programming languages

A novel approach is proposed for automatic generation of concurrent interpreters for formal specifications of the programming languages. It consists of a formal notation and supporting algorithms. The formal notation is called action equations, which are attribute grammars extended by the concepts of events and unification. The supporting algorithms include preprocessing algorithms to generate the interpreters and evaluation algorithms embedded in the generated interpreters. Attribute grammars are reviewed, the extension to the action equations paradigm is explained, and the synthesis of action equations with a unification strategy as a means for specifying and implementing synchronization primitives is presented. The approach is illustrated by a specification of CSP. A brief comparison to related work is included