# Defining a More Complex Syntax

Here we learn how to define a more complex language syntax than LAMBDA's, namely the C-like syntax of IMP. Also, we will learn how to define languages using multiple modules, because we are going to separate IMP's syntax from its semantics using modules. Finally, we will also learn how to use K's builtin support for syntactic lists.

The K tool provides modules for grouping language features. In general, we can organize our languages in arbitrarily complex module structures. While there are no rigid requirements or even guidelines for how to group language features in modules, we often separate the language syntax from the language semantics in different modules.

In our case here, we start by defining two modules, IMP-SYNTAX and IMP, and import the first in the second, using the keyword imports. As their names suggest, we will place all IMP's syntax definition in IMP-SYNTAX and all its semantics in IMP.

Note, however, that K does no more than simply includes all the contents of the imported module in the one which imports it (making sure that everything is only kept once, even if you import it multiple times). In other words, there is currently nothing fancy in K tool's module system.

IMP has six syntactic categories, as shown in imp.k: AExp for arithmetic expressions, BExp for Boolean expressions, Block for blocks, Stmt for statements, Pgm for programs and Ids for comma-separated lists of identifiers. Blocks are special statements, whose role is to syntactically constrain the conditional statement and the while loop statement to only take blocks as branches and body, respectively.

There is nothing special about arithmetic and Boolean expressions. They are given the expected strictness attributes, except for <= and &&, for demonstration purposes.

The <= is defined to be seqstrict, which means that it evaluates its arguments in order, from left-to-right (recall that the strict operators can evaluate their arguments in any, fully interleaved, orders). Like strict, the seqstrict annotation can also be configured; for example, one can specify in which arguments and in what order. By default, seqstrict refers to all the arguments, in their left-to-right order. In our case here, it is equivalent with seqstrict(1 2).

The && is only strict in its first argument, because we will give it a short-circuited semantics (its second argument will only be evaluated when the first evaluates to true). Recall the K tool also allows us to associate LaTex attributes to constructs, telling the document generator how to display them. For example, we associate <= the attribute latex({#1}\leq{#2}), which makes it be displayed $\leq$ everywhere in the generated LaTex documentation.

In this tutorial we take the freedom to associate the various constructs parsing precedences that we have already tested and we know work well, so that we can focus on the semantics here instead of syntax. In practice, though, you typically need to experiment with precedences until you obtain the desired parser.

Blocks are defined using curly brackets, and they can either be empty or hold a statement.

Nothing special about the IMP statements. Note that ; is an assignment statement terminator, not a statement separator. Note also that blocks are special statements.

An IMP program declares a comma-separated list of variables using the keyword int like in C, followed by a semicolon ;, followed by a statement. Syntactically, the idea here is that we can wrap any IMP program within a main(){...} function and get a valid C program. IMP does not allow variable declarations anywhere else except through this construct, at the top-level of the program. Other languages provided with the K distribution (see, e.g., the IMP++ language also discussed in this tutorial) remove this top-level program construct of IMP and add instead variable declaration as a statement construct, which can be used anywhere in the program, not only at the top level.

Note how we defined the comma-separated list of identifiers using List{Id,","}. The K tool provides builtin support for generic syntactic lists. In general,

syntax B ::= List{A,T}


declares a new non-terminal, B, corresponding to T-separated sequences of elements of A, where A is a non-terminal and T is a terminal. These lists can also be empty, that is, IMP programs declaring no variable are also allowed (e.g., int; {} is a valid IMP program). To instantiate and use the K builtin lists, you should alias each instance with a (typically fresh) non-terminal in your syntax, like we do with the Ids nonterminal.

Like with other K features, there are ways to configure the syntactic lists, but we do not discuss them here.

Recall from Tutorial 1 (LAMBDA) that in order for strictness to work well we also need to tell K which computations are meant to be results. We do this as well now, in the module IMP: integers and Booleans are K results.

Kompile imp.k and test the generated parser by running some programs. Since IMP is a fragment of C, you may want to select the C mode in your editor when writing these programs. This will also give your the feel that you are writing programs in a real programming language.

For example, here is sum.imp, which sums in sum all numbers up to n:

int n, sum;
n = 100;
sum=0;
while (!(n <= 0)) {
sum = sum + n;
n = n + -1;
}


Now krun it and see how it looks parsed in the default k cell.

The program collatz.imp tests the Collatz conjecture for all numbers up to m and accumulates the total number of steps in s:

int m, n, q, r, s;
m = 10;
while (!(m<=2)) {
n = m;
m = m + -1;
while (!(n<=1)) {
s = s+1;
q = n/2;
r = q+q+1;
if (r<=n) {
n = n+n+n+1;         // n becomes 3*n+1 if odd
} else {n=q;}          //        of   n/2 if even
}
}


Finally, program primes.imp counts in s all the prime numbers up to m:

int i, m, n, q, r, s, t, x, y, z;
m = 10;  n = 2;
while (n <= m) {
// checking primality of n and writing t to 1 or 0
i = 2;  q = n/i;  t = 1;
while (i<=q && 1<=t) {
x = i;
y = q;
// fast multiplication (base 2) algorithm
z = 0;
while (!(x <= 0)) {
q = x/2;
r = q+q+1;
if (r <= x) { z = z+y; } else {}
x = q;
y = y+y;
} // end fast multiplication
if (n <= z) { t = 0; } else { i = i+1;  q = n/i; }
} // end checking primality
if (1 <= t) { s = s+1; } else {}
n = n+1;
}


All the programs above will run once we define the semantics of IMP. If you want to execute them now, wrap them in a main(){...} function and compile them and run them with your favorite C compiler.

Before we move to the K semantics of IMP, we would like to make some clarifications regarding the K builtin parser, kast. Although it is quite powerful, you should not expect magic from it! While the K parser can parse many non-trivial languages (see, for example, the KOOL language in pl-tutorial/2_languages) in the K distribution), it was never meant to be a substitute for real parsers. We often call the syntax defined in K the syntax of the semantics, to highlight the fact that its role is to serve as a convenient notation when writing the semantics, not necessarily as a means to define concrete syntax of arbitrarily complex programming languages. See the KERNELC language for an example on how to connect an external parser for concrete syntax to the K tool.

The above being said, we strongly encourage you to strive to make the builtin parser work with your desired language syntax! Do not give up simply because you don't want to deal with syntactic problems. On the contrary, fight for your syntax! If you really cannot define your desired syntax because of tool limitations, we would like to know. Please tell us.

Until now we have only seen default configurations. In the next lesson we will learn how to define a K custom configuration.

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