A Theory of Name Resolution [chapter]

Pierre Neron, Andrew Tolmach, Eelco Visser, Guido Wachsmuth
2015 Lecture Notes in Computer Science  
We describe a language-independent theory for name binding and resolution, suitable for programming languages with complex scoping rules including both lexical scoping and modules. We formulate name resolution as a two-stage problem. First a language-independent scope graph is constructed using language-specific rules from an abstract syntax tree. Then references in the scope graph are resolved to corresponding declarations using a language-independent resolution process. We introduce a
more » ... on calculus as a concise, declarative, and languageindependent specification of name resolution. We develop a resolution algorithm that is sound and complete with respect to the calculus. Based on the resolution calculus we develop language-independent definitions of α-equivalence and rename refactoring. We illustrate the approach using a small example language with modules. In addition, we show how our approach provides a model for a range of name binding patterns in existing languages. A Theory of Name Resolution with Extended Coverage and Proofs SERG 6
doi:10.1007/978-3-662-46669-8_9 fatcat:4lxvofyc7rcodef5j7bnx7jkri