04/02/2021
By Benjamin Mourad

The Department of Computer Science announces the master's thesis defense by Benjamin Mourad entitled, "Language Transformations with Lang-n-Change."

Master Candidate: Benjamin Mourad
Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Time: 11 a.m. EST
Location: There will be a virtual defense via Zoom. Those interested in attending please contact Benjamin_Mourad@student.uml.edu at least 24 hours before the defense to request access to the meeting.

Committee Members:

  • Matteo Cimini (Advisor), Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • John (Jay) McCarthy, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Sashank Narain, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Abstract:

The design of programming languages often involves language reuse when new features are added. Features such as subtyping, pattern-matching, and information-flow security are typically added a posteriori to a base language definition. However, language designers are often left with the burden of manually augmenting their languages with these desired features.

In this thesis, we make the observation that the task of adding such features can be expressed as algorithms over language definitions, or in our parlance, language transformations. Based on this, we have developed Lang-n-Change, a domain-specific language for expressing these transformations. We choose to model languages in the style of operational semantics, which provides us with precise, formal definitions and a close mapping to real language implementations. We show our experiments with several language features, such as pattern-matching and information-flow security, and we evaluate our results.