Specification and Construction of Control Flow Semantics a generic approach using graph transformations

The semantics of programming languages lack a formal, standardized specification language. We focus on control flow semantics and propose a graphical specification framework for these semantics, consisting of three elements: a graphical control flow specification language, a rule-based approach for constructing flow graphs and transformations from the former to the latter. In this thesis we introduce a control flow specification language () with which a language designer can specify the control flow semantics of all constructs that are featured in the programming language he or she designs. A control flow specification in  consists of a set of specification graphs that adhere to the meta-model. We also presents a structured, rule-based approach for constructing a flow graph () for a program written in a particular programming language. In this approach, we use graph transformations to transform an abstract syntax graph representation () of the program into a . Such a graph transformation system consists of a set of programming language specific  construction rules. Transformations between the two models are performed by another set of graph production rules: the  meta-rules. These meta-rules generate the  construction rules for a programming language from a control flow specification of that language in , thereby eliminating the need for hand designing the  construction rules.