Abstract

Static-semantics determines the validity of a program, while a typechecker provides more specific type error information. Type-checkers are specified based on the static semantics specification, for the purpose of identifying and presenting type errors in invalid programs. We discuss a style of algebraically specifying the static semantics of a language which facilitates automatic generation of a type-checker and a language specific error reporter. Such a specification can also be extended in a modular manner to yield human-readable error messages. 1 An Introduction Static-semantics of a language determines the validity of a program written in that language. Type-checking of a program, to be useful in practice, should not only indicate whether a given program is valid or not, but also summarize the type errors and show the location of the erroneous constructs which caused the errors. Thus, specifying a type-checker that is useful in practice results in (textually) modifying th...

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