STUDY AND IMPLEMENTATION OF RULE-BASED EXTENSIONS TO C++ COMPILER

Abstract

One of the purposes of a programming language is to provide the right level of abstraction, freeing programmers from irrelevant implementation details and allowing them to work at a more natural level for solving problems. Object-oriented programming with its rich modeling capability has taken a large step away from details, towards more direct problem- solving. In particular, the concepts of data abstraction and inheritance supported in object-oriented languages have simplified the design and implementation of sophisticated applications that model complex domains. Certain tasks in an object-oriented design, e.g., those that maintain model integrity, should be performed automatically, without explicit procedural invocation. This leads to another concept that object-oriented languages support another abstraction, namely data-driven computation. To provide data-driven computation in a form that can be readily applied by mainstream object oriented programmers with little additional training, a seamless integration of rules, objects, and procedural code is needed. In particular, any rule construct should be designed as a natural extension of a commonly-used object-oriented language, with rules made subservient to the object-oriented paradigm. There should be little new syntax required in the rules, and the rule semantics should fit well within the object-oriented paradigm. The translator is implemented in Borland C++ on windows 9x platform