Investigation and implementation of a tree transformation system for user friendly programming

Abstract

The programming system (TTPS) described in this thesis is based on tree transformatioc techniques, commonly known as abstract transformation. The objects manipulated by the user through "TTPS" are: the templates, the transformation rules, and the programs. The templates define the syntactic and semantic language framework which will be used to parse and unparse both the rules and the program trees. The rules define the semantic behavior of the transformation process. The program represents the source tree which describes the problem to solve, and will be interpreted by a successive application of the supplied rules until they no longer apply. "TTPS" provides an appropriate environment for a large class of applications (e.g. system programming, code generation, structure transformation, simulation of syntax directed editors, and other conventional applications) , and supports many programming styles such as functional programming, conventional programming, and user defined style.