Facilitating Modular Property-Preserving Extensions of Programming Languages

We will explore an approach to modular programming language descriptions and extensions in a denotational style. Based on a language core, language features are added stepwise on the core. Language features can be described separated from each other in a self-contained, orthogonal way. We present an extension semantics framework consisting of mechanisms to adapt semantics of a basic language to new structural requirements in an extended language preserving the behaviour of programs of the basic language. Common templates of extension are provided. These can be collected in extension libraries accessible to and extendible by language designers. Mechanisms to extend these libraries are provided. A notation for describing language features embedding these semantics extensions is presented.