An Approach for Modeling the Name Lookup Problem in the C++ Programming Language

Abstract. Formal grammars are well established for specifying the syntax of programming languages. However, the formal specification of programming language semantics has proven more elusive. A recent standard, the Unified Modeling Language (UML), has quickly become established as a common framework for the specification of large scale software applications. In this paper, we describe an approach for using the UML to specify aspects of the static semantics of programming languages. In particular, we describe a technique for solving the name lookup problem for the recently standardized C++ programming language. We apply our approach to C++ because a solution to the name lookup problem is required for parser construction and our solution is applicable to Java and other programming languages.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: SAC
• Authors: James F. Power, Brian A. Malloy
• Keywords: Applied Computing, Lookup Problem, Programming Language Semantics, Programming Languages, SAC 2000