Jacob Matthews, Robby Findler, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen. A Visual Environment for Developing Context-Sensitive Term Rewriting Systems. In Vincent van Oostrom, editor, Rewriting Techniques and Applications, 15th International Conference, RTA 2004, Aachen, Germany, June 3-5, 2004, Proceedings. Volume 3091 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 301-311, Springer, 2004. [doi]
Over the past decade, researchers have found context-sensitive term-rewriting semantics to be powerful and expressive tools for modeling programming languages, particularly in establishing type soundness proofs. Unfortunately, developing such semantics is an error-prone activity. To address that problem, we have designed PLT Redex, an embedded domain-specific language that helps users interactively create and debug context-sensitive term-rewriting systems. We introduce the tool with a series of examples and discuss our experience using it in courses and developing an operational semantics for R5RS Scheme.