An efficient method for incremental attribute evaluation by using multi-dependency

As tools for specifying semantics of programming languages, attribute grammars have found wide application in developing various kinds of software tools and environments. Incremental attribute evaluation is the fundamental mechanism of generating incremental programming environments. The authors define the multi-dependency relation among attributes and propose a novel approach to incremental attribute evaluation. Efficient algorithms for a restricted class of attribute grammar NCMD-AG have been developed. The algorithms can be generalized to deal with any attributed grammar. A comprehensive study shows that the multi-dependency approach satisfactorily yields performance in terms of application range, time, and space efficiency.<
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