Conquer Compiler Complexity

With an aim to address the modularity problems in languageimplementations, this thesis presents a new language implementationformalism and archetype that improves the modularity in compilerconstruction in a two dimensional manner. Structure wise, a newparsing algorithm called Component-based LR parsing is utilized todecompose a language implementation into executable components atthe byte-code level, which decreases the complexity of building alarge language by constructing a set of smaller languages; Functionwise, the framework employs object-oriented and aspect-orientedprogramming paradigms to describe syntax and semantic entitiesseparately, which facilitates Separation of Concerns by isolatingsyntax and semantics as well as semantic phases themselves intodifferent modules. The techniques in these two dimensions work in acoherent manner, producing a solution that can solve bothmodularization obstacles introduced above. Consequently, theframework increases the comprehensibility, reusability,changeability, extendibility and independent development ability ofboth syntax and semantics specification with less developmentworkload required from compiler designers.