Chapter Program Transformation With Concrete Object Syntax

Strategies for Program Transformation
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Introduction

Meta-programs manipulate structured representations (abstract syntax) of programs. The distance between the concrete syntax meta-programmers use to reason about programs and the notation for abstract syntax manipulation provided by general purpose (meta-) programming languages is too large for many applications. In this chapter it is shown how the syntax definition formalism SDF can be employed to fit a meta-programming language with concrete syntax notation for composing and analyzing object programs. As a case study, the addition of concrete syntax to the program transformation language Stratego is presented. The approach is then generalized to arbitrary meta-languages.

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