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From: grover%brahmand@Sun.COM (Vinod Grover)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: OOD applied to interpreters and compilers
Summary: Is IDL OOD?
Keywords: OOD interpreters
Message-ID: <125722@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 4 Oct 89 00:07:15 GMT
References: <26873@genrad.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: grover@sun.UUCP (Vinod Grover)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 27

In article <26873@genrad.UUCP> charlie@genrad.com (Charlie D. Havener) writes:
>The examples I have seen on Object Oriented Design apply 
>nicely to problems like graphic window systems and to problems
>in which there are real physical objects one can think about.
>It is not at all clear to me how to apply OOD or to use Object
>oriented programming style to the design of program language
>compilers or interpreters. 
>
>There seems to be a classic way to do these things, i.e. lexer-
>parser-code generator that is well established. 
>
>Can someone who is comfortable with OOD comment on its applicability
>to such problems? Is OOD a poor match to some problems? Will anyone
>admit it?
>
>Comments pro and con appreciated, thanks
>Charlie Havener GenRad Inc. (508-369-4400 x3302) charlie@genrad.com

IF (big if:) we understand OOD to include the use of inheritance, THEN IDL
(Interface Description Language) can be said to be "object-oriented". Many
compilers use IDL to describe the intermediate-language and data structures.
You define a class of data for some program node, and various backend phases
inherit from this class of data to add attributes to that class of data. 

DIANA is a publicly available IDL description for use in Ada compilers.

-- Vinod Grover