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I am curious to learn about creating a domain specific language. For now the domain is quite basic, just have some variables and run some loops, if statements.

Edit :The language will be Non-English based with a very simple syntax .

I am thinking of targeting the Java Virtual Machine, ie compile to Java byte code.

Currently I know how to write some simple grammars using ANTLR.

I know that ANTLR creates a lexer and parser but how do I go forward from here?

  • about semantic analysis: does it have to be manually written or are there some tools to create it?
  • how can the output from the lexer and parser be converted to Java byte code?
  • I know that there are libraries like ASM or BCEL but what is the exact procedure?
  • are there any frameworks for doing this? And if there is, what is the simplest one?
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  • Actually the project is on hold , So Sorry I forgot about this question , I will be taking a look xtext in 2 months. I also feel that @IraBaxter 's answer is also good, So I will go ahead and Accept Rui's answer for now Commented Feb 25, 2012 at 11:47

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You should try Xtext, an Eclipse-based DSL toolkit. Version 2 is quite powerful and stable. From its home page you have plenty of resources to get you started, including some video tutorials. Because the Eclipse ecosystem runs around Java, it seems the best choice for you.

You can also try MPS, but this is a projectional editor, and beginners may find it more difficult. It is nevertheless not less powerful than Xtext.

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If your goal is to learn as much as possible about compilers, then indeed you have to go the hard way - write an ad hoc parser (no antlr and alike), write your own semantic passes and your own code generation.

Otherwise, you'd better extend an existing extensible language with your DSL, reusing its parser, its semantics and its code generation functionality. For example, you can easily implement an almost arbitrary complex DSL on top of Clojure macros (and Clojure itself is then translated into JVM, you'll get it for free).

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I don't want to go that deep , I just want create a simple Non-English based domain specific language that targets the Java virtual Machine.So the domain is actually Non-English and simple syntax .
@Gautham5678, then probably macros will be your best bet. Your simple syntax is likely to be a subset of S-expressions.
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A DSL with simple syntax may or may not mean simple semantics.

Simple semantics may or may not mean easy translation to a target language; such translations are "technically easy" only if the DSL and the target languate share a lot of common data types and execution models. (Constraint systems have simple semantics, but translating them to Fortran is really hard!). (You gotta wonder: if translating your DSL is easy, why do you have it?)

If you want to build a DSL (in your case you stick with easy because you are learning), you want DSL compiler infrastructure that has whatever you need in it, including support for difficult translations. "What is needed" to handle translating all DSLs to all possible target languages is clearly an impossibly large set of machinery.

However, there is a lot which is clear that can be helpful:

  • Strong parsing machinery (who wants to diddle with grammars whose structure is forced by the weakness of the parsing machinery? (If you don't know what this is, go read about LL(1) grammmars as an example).
  • Automatic construction of a representation (e.g, an abstract syntax tree) of the parsed DSL
  • Ability to access/modify/build new ASTs
  • Ability to capture information about symbols and their meaning (symbol tables)
  • Ability to build analyses of the AST for the DSL, to support translations that require informatoin from "far away" in the tree, to influence the translation at a particular point in the tree
  • Ability to reogranize the AST easily to achieve local optimizations
  • Ability to consturct/analysis control and dataflow information if the DSL has some procedural aspects, and the code generation requires deep reasoning or optimization

Most of the tools available for "building DSL generators" provide some kind of parsing, perhaps tree building, and then leave you to fill in all the rest. This puts you in the position of having a small, clean DSL but taking forever to implement it. That's not good. You really want all that infrastructure.

Our DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit has all the infrastructure sketched above and more. (It clearly doesn't, and can't have the moon). You can see a complete, all-in-one-"page", simple DSL example that exercises some ineresting parts of this machinery.

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