Treffer: Animators for Generated Programming Environments

Animation of execution is a necessary feature of source-level debuggers. We present a framework where animators are generated from existing algebraic specifications of interpreters. To this end, a patternmatching mechanism is used in conjunction with origin tracking, a generic tracing technique. The generation of animators is illustrated using an example language named CLaX, a Pascal relative. We study how our approach can be extended to the generation of source-level debuggers and algorithmic debuggers from specifications of interpreters. 1 Introduction We study animators for generated programming environments. An animator is a tool which visualizes program execution; typically, it highlights the statement that is currently executing. Animators are especially useful for (automated) debugging and tutoring. We use the ASF+SDF Meta-environment [14] to generate programming environments, consisting of syntax-directed editors, type-checkers, and interpreters, from algebraic spec.