Hendrik van Antwerpen, Pierre Néron, Andrew P. Tolmach, Eelco Visser, Guido Wachsmuth. Language-Independent Type-Dependent Name Resolution. Technical Report TUD-SERG-2015-006, Delft University of Technology, Software Engineering Research Group, Delft, The Netherlands, July 2015.
We extend and combine two existing declarative formalisms, the scope graphs of Neron et al. and type constraint systems, to build a language-independent theory that can describe both name and type resolution for realistic languages with complex scope and typing rules. Unlike conventional static semantics presentations, our approach maintains a clear separation between scoping and typing concerns, while still be- ing able to handle language constructs, such as class field access, for which name and type resolution are necessarily intertwined. We define a constraint scheme that can express both typing and name binding constraints, and give a for- mal notion of constraint satisfiability together with a sound algorithm for finding solutions in important special cases. We describe the details of constraint generation for a model language that illustrates many of the interesting resolution issues associated with modules, classes, and records. Our constraint generator and solver have been implemented in the Spoofax Language Workbench.