Dino P. Oliva’s research while affiliated with Northeastern University and other places

. This paper describes a verified compiler for PreScheme, the implementation language for the vlisp run-time system. The compiler and proof were divided into three parts: A transformational front end that translates source text into a core language, a syntax-directed compiler that translates the core language into a combinator-based tree-manipulation language, and a linearizer that translates combinator code into code for an abstract stored-program machine with linear memory for both data and code. This factorization enabled different proof techniques to be used for the different phases of the compiler, and also allowed the generation of good code. Finally, the whole process was made possible by carefully defining the semantics of vlisp PreScheme rather than just adopting Scheme's. We believe that the architecture of the compiler and its correctness proof can easily be applied to compilers for languages other than PreScheme. Table of Contents 1 Introduction : : : : : : : : : : : : : :...

Conventional techniques for semantics-directed compiler derivation yield abstract machines that manipulate trees. However, in order to produce a real compiler, one has to represent these trees in memory. In this paper we show how the technique of storage-layout relations can be applied to verify the correctness of storage representations in a very general way. This technique allows us to separate denotational from operational reasoning, so that each can be used when needed. As an example, we show the correctness of a stack implementation of a language including dynamic catch and throw. The representation uses static and dynamic links to thread the environment and continuation through the stack. We discuss other uses of these techniques.