conclusion

examples/gfcc/complin.tex

@@ -663,6 +663,60 @@ int main () {           call ilt ;              call ilt ;
 
 
 
+\subsection{How to restore code generation by linearization}
+
+SInce postprocessing is needed, we have not quite achieved
+the goal of code generation as linearization.
+If linearization is understood in the
+sense of GF. In GF, linearization rules must be
+compositional, and can only depend on parameters from
+finite parameter sets. Hence it is not possible to encode
+linearization with updates to and lookups from a symbol table,
+as is usual in code generation. 
+
+Compositionality also prevents optimizations during linearization
+by clever instruction selection, elimination of superfluous
+labels and jumps, etc.
+
+It would of course be possible to implement the compiler
+back end in GF in the traditional way, as a noncompositional
+function from the abstract syntax of C to a different abstract
+syntax of JVM. The abstract syntax notation of GF permits
+definitions of functions, and the GF interpreter can be used
+for evaluating terms into normal form. Thus one could write
+\begin{verbatim}
+  fun 
+    transStm : Env -> Stm -> EnvInstr ;
+  def
+    transStm env (Decl typ rest) = ... 
+    transStm env (Assign typ var exp rest) = ... 
+\end{verbatim}
+This would be cumbersome in practice, because
+GF does not have facilities like built-in lists and tuples, 
+or monads. Of course, the compiler could no longer be
+inverted into a decompiler, in the way true linearization
+can be inverted into a parser.
+
+Yet another possibility is to change the abstract syntax
+so that variables do not only carry a string with them but
+also a relative address. This would certainly be possible
+with dependent types; but it would clutter the abstract
+syntax in a way that is hard to motivate when we are in
+the business of describing the syntax of C.
+
+Perhaps the key idea would be to hard-code some support
+for symbol tables into the extension of GF tuned for
+compiler construction. For instance, the linearization
+of a binding could store, in addition to the variable
+symbol field \verb6.$06, an integer-valued fiels \verb6.#06.
+These fields correspond to an automatic renaming of variables
+to \verb6x1, x2, x36,\ldots starting from the outermost one.
+Linearization to C could then use the \verb6.$06 field, as
+in this paper, and linearization to JVM the \verb6.#06 field.
+
+
+
+
 \section{Related work}
 
 The theoretical ideas behind our compiler experiment
@@ -709,45 +763,19 @@ desired for things like literals and precedences.
 
 The parser generated by GF is not able to parse all
 source programs, because some cyclic parse
-rules (of the form $C ::= C$) are generated. Recovery from cyclic
-rules is ongoing work in GF independently of this
+rules (of the form $C ::= C$) are generated from our grammar. 
+Recovery from cyclic rules is ongoing work in GF independently of this
 experiment. 
 For the time being, the interactive editor is the best way to
 construct C programs using our grammar.
 
-
-The most serious problem is that the idea of compilation
-as linearization does not quite work in the generation
-of JVM code, if linearization is understood in the
-sense of GF. In GF, linearization rules must be
-compositional, and can only depend on parameters from
-finite parameter sets. Hence it is not possible to encode
-linearization with updates to and lookups from a symbol table,
-as is usual in code generation. 
-
-Compositionality also prevents optimizations during linearization
-by clever instruction selection, elimination of superfluous
-labels and jumps, etc.
-
-It would of course be possible to implement the compiler
-back end in GF in the traditional way, as a noncompositional
-function from the abstract syntax of C to a different abstract
-syntax of JVM. The abstract syntax notation of GF permits
-definitions of functions, and the GF interpreter can be used
-for evaluating terms into normal form. Thus one could write
-\begin{verbatim}
-  fun 
-    transStm : Env -> Stm -> EnvInstr ;
-  def
-    transStm env (Decl typ rest) = ... 
-    transStm env (Assign typ var exp rest) = ... 
-\end{verbatim}
-This would be cumbersome in practice, because
-GF does not have facilities like built-in lists and tuples, 
-or monads. Of course, the compiler could no longer be
-inverted into a decompiler, in the way true linearization
-can be inverted into a parser.
-
+The most serious difficulty with using GF as a compiler tool
+is how to generate machine code by linearization if this depends on
+an evolving symbol table mapping variables to addresses.
+Since the compositional linearization model of GF does not
+support this, we needed postprocessing to get real JVM code
+from the linearization result. The question is this problem can
+be solved by some simple and natural new feature of GF.