In computing, tombstone diagrams (or T-diagrams) consist of a set of “puzzle pieces” representing compilers and other related language processing programs. They are used to illustrate and reason about transformations from a source language (left of T) to a target language (right of T) realised in an implementation language (bottom of T). They are most commonly found describing complicated processes for bootstrapping, porting, and self-compiling of compilers, interpreters, and macro-processors.
T-diagrams were first used for describing bootstrapping and cross-compiling compilers by Harvey Bratman in 1961, who reshaped the diagrams originally introduced by Strong et al. (1958) to illustrate UNCOL. Later on, others, including McKeeman et al. and P.D. Terry, explained the usage of T-diagrams with further detail. T-diagrams are also now used to describe client-server interconnectivity on the World Wide Web. A teaching tool TDiag has been implemented at Leipzig University, Germany.
See also
References
- ^ Terry, 1997, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3
- Bratman, Harvey (March 1961). "A alternate form of the "UNCOL diagram"". Communications of the ACM. 4 (3): 142. doi:10.1145/366199.366249.
- Strong, J.; Wegstein, J.; Tritter, A.; Olsztyn, J.; Mock, O.; Steel, T. (August 1958). "The Problem of Programming Communication with Changing Machines: A Proposed Solution". Communications of the ACM. 1 (8): 12–18. doi:10.1145/368892.368915.
- McKeeman et al., A Compiler Generator (1971)
- Patrick Closhen, Hans-Juergen Hoffmann, et al. 1997: T-Diagrams as Visual Language to Illustrate WWW Technology, Darmstadt University of Technology, Darmstadt, Germany
- Michael Hielscher, et al.: TDiag: Entwicklung und Ausführung eines T-Diagramms, in German
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