[Colloq] PhD Thesis Proposal - Paul Stansifer - Safe and Expressive Metaprogramming - October 30th - 2pm - Behrakis 320

[Biron, Jessica]

Date: Thursday, October 30, 2014
Time: 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Room: Behrakis 320
Title: Safe and expressive metaprogramming

Abstract:

Metaprogramming, the practice of writing programs to analyze or manipulate programs, is a powerful technique. The most natural ways of writing metaprograms, however, are fraught with the problem that they do not naturally preserve the meanings of names, and existing techniques to solve this support manipulating only very limited languages.
I propose to show that we can usefully manipulate syntax in an automatically binding-safe way, even syntax with complex binding patterns. I will present the language Romeo, a proof-of-concept system for safe metaprogramming that can express complex binding forms. Then I will sketch the design that I intend to use to take the techniques from Romeo and adapt them to Redex, an existing metaprogramming system with no support for binding safety. By relaxing the safety guarantee slightly, I hope to show that binding-safe program is possible to do in a way that is compatible with Redex's style.