Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-495rp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-18T19:20:34.374Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Syntactic Objects

from Part I - Judgments and Rules

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Robert Harper
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

Programming languages are languages, a means of expressing computations in a form comprehensible to both people and machines. The syntax of a language specifies the means by which various sorts of phrases (expressions, commands, declarations, and so forth) may be combined to form programs. But what sort of thing are these phrases? What is a program made of?

The informal concept of syntax may be seen to involve several distinct concepts. The surface, or concrete, syntax is concerned with how phrases are entered and displayed on a computer. The surface syntax is usually thought of as given by strings of characters from some alphabet (say, ASCII or Unicode). The structural, or abstract, syntax is concerned with the structure of phrases, specifically how they are composed from other phrases. At this level a phrase is a tree, called an abstract syntax tree, whose nodes are operators that combine several phrases to form another phrase. The binding structure of syntax is concerned with the introduction and use of identifiers: how they are declared and how declared identifiers are to be used. At this level phrases are abstract binding trees, which enrich abstract syntax trees with the concepts of binding and scope.

We do not concern ourselves in this book with matters of concrete syntax, but instead work at the level of abstract syntax. To prepare the ground for the rest of the book, this chapter begins by definining abstract syntax trees and abstract binding trees and some functions and relations associated with them.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Syntactic Objects
  • Robert Harper, Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania
  • Book: Practical Foundations for Programming Languages
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139342131.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Syntactic Objects
  • Robert Harper, Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania
  • Book: Practical Foundations for Programming Languages
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139342131.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Syntactic Objects
  • Robert Harper, Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania
  • Book: Practical Foundations for Programming Languages
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139342131.002
Available formats
×