STARLET: An Affix-Based Compiler Compiler Designed as a Logic Programming System

We present STARLET, a new compiler compiler which compiles Extended Affix G r a m m a r s defining a translation into an executable program : the translator. We look at its operational semantics and we focus on the points which are close to or different from Prolog procedural semantics. We discuss the two interwoven issues which are Program Reliability (due to many static checks) and Program Efficiency (optimizations at compile time). Both are reached through a systematic use of grammatical properties. I I n t r o d u c t i o n Our research group has been working on grammatical programming development i.e. an approach to software construction based on compiling methods [Beney-86], Compiler compilers are designed as high-level programming environments and if compiler writing is the major application field, we also investigate other application fields [Fr~con 89].