EMBEDDING DSLS INTO GPLS: A GRAMMATICAL INFERENCE APPROACH *

Abstract

Embedding of Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) into General-Purpose Languages (GPLs) is oftenused to express domain-specific problems using the domain’s natural syntax inside GPL programs. It speeds up thedevelopment process, programs are more self-explanatory and repeating tasks are easier to handle. End-users ordomain experts know what the desired language syntax would look like, but do not know how to write a grammar andlanguage processing tools. Grammatical inference can be used for grammar extraction from input examples. Amemetic algorithm for grammatical inference, named MAGIc, was implemented to extract grammar from DSLexamples. In this work MAGIc is extended with embedding the inferred DSL into existing GPL grammar.Additionally, negative examples were also incorporated into the inference process. From the results it can be concludedthat MAGIc is successful for DSL embedding and that the inference process is improved with use of negativeexamples.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.40.4.980