Embedded Domain Specific Languages (EDSLs)

As programming language research has matured an interesting resemblance between libraries and programming languages has been identified. A small library of domain specific concepts can been seen in a certain sense to be a domain specific language (DSL).

Such languages inherit most of their features from the host language making this approach to developing them an attractive alternative to the standard methods of compiler/interpreter construction. Unfortunately, this approach is only feasible for prototyping languages due to the fact that EDSLs are neither efficient nor have adequate programming tool support.

My research will focus on the ability of meta-programming, specifically, compile-time metaprogramming, in solving the afformentioned problems. It is hoped that this research will make the EDSL approach to language construction a viable alternative to traditional techniques.