pTAL(ID:8239/)

for portable TAL

Version of TAL that was (more) machine-independent, translated to C++
Related languages
TAL => pTAL   Port of
References:
  • Andrews, Kristy et al "Macro and File Structure Preservation in Source-to-source Translation" Software - Practice and Experience, 26(3), March, 1996. view details
  • Tandem Computers, Inc., pTAL Reference Manual, Version D40 view details
  • Mark Molloy et al "Automatic interoperability test generation for source-to-source translators" International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis Proceedings of the 1998 ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Software testing and analysis Clearwater Beach, Florida, United States pp93 - 101 view details Abstract: This paper describes a strategy for automatically generating tests which ensure interface compatibility between software components expressed in two different languages. This strategy is useful for testing code produced by a source-to-source computer language translator and for testing the compatibility of compilers for the different languages. External link: Online copy Extract: pTAL, pointers, optional parameters
    Both our original language, pTAL, and the language of the
    translation we produce, C++, use a combination of value
    and pointer parameters. To check pointer parameters, the
    Do component creates an instance of the domain type then
    passes a pointer to it. The Verify component checks the
    value, then fills in a new value that is in turn checked by the
    Do component upon return. Languages that implement
    value/result parameters would check values similarly.
    If the profile has a result type, the Verify component returns
    a procedure result value, which is checked by the Do
    component.
    The pTAL language contains a mechanism for optionally
    passing parameters; the maximum number of parameters is
    known and any parameter may be either present or absent.
    This feature differs significantly from the C language
    "va_list" model in which the maximum number of
    parameters is not known. The AITG checks all
    combinations of presence and absence for the first four
    parameters* and selected combinations beyond that. A
    similar strategy might check for various lengths of
    parameter lists, assuming heuristics about how long the
    parameter list might be.
    Resources
    • Example of pTAL being verified from Molloy et al 1997

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