Parsing@SLE

September 14, 2014 in Västerås, Sweden. Co-located with SLE, ASE, and GPCE.

Program

The workshop will take place in Room 201 of the Aros Congress Center in Västerås.

Time Content
9:00-10:00 Session 1
  Introduction (30 min)
  Talk 1: Verified parsing in the real world, by Tom Ridge slides
10:00-10:30 Coffee break
10:30-12:30 Session 2
  Talk 2: Developing SDF3, by Luís Eduardo Amorim, Eelco Visser and Guido Wachsmuth slides
  Talk 3: Homomorphic Language Representations Provide Efficient Recognition and Parsing, by Anssi Yli-Jyrä
  Talk 4: Modelling Parsing and Unparsing, by Vadim Zaytsev and Anya Helene Bagge slides
  Talk 5: Parsing Contexts for PEGs, by Jan Kurs, Mircea Lungu and Oscar Nierstrasz slides
12:30-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:30 Session 3
  Talk 6: Meerkat Parsers: General Top-down Parser Combinator Library, by Anastasia Izmaylova, Ali Afroozeh and Tijs Van der Storm
  Talk 7: A domain-specific debugger for the PetitParser parser framework, by Andrei Chis, Tudor Girba and Oscar Nierstrasz slides
  Talk 8: Staging Parser Combinator for Efficient Data Processing, by Manohar Jonnalagedda slides
15:30-16:00 Coffee break
16:00-17:30 Session 4
  Talk 9: LR Parsing Challenges in Java 8, by Erik Hogeman, Jesper Öqvist and Gorel Hedin slides
  Group discussion on the future of parsing (60 min)
18:00 Workshop dinner (non-sponsored) at LaxMi (Indian), Snickaregatan 1

Topic

While parsing and parser generation, both in theory and in practice, are mature topics, there are challenging problems with respect to the construction, maintenance, optimization, and application of parsers in real-world scenarios.

Especially in the context of real programming languages there are ample theoretical as well as practical obstacles to be overcome. Contemporary parsing challenges are caused by programming-language evolution and diversity in the face of new application areas such as IDE construction, reverse engineering, software metrics, domain specific (embedded) languages, etc. What are modular meta-formalisms for parser generation? How to obtain (fast and correct) parsers for both legacy and new languages that require more computational power than context-free grammars and regular expressions can provide? How to enable the verified construction or prototyping of parsers for languages such as COBOL, C++ and Scala without years of effort?

In addition to the traditional programming-language applications of parsing technology, several other areas of computing also depend heavily on parsers. Examples include computational linguistics, network traffic classification, network security, and bioinformatics. Those areas often have their own unusual requirements, such as: speed (e.g. in network algorithmics), memory efficiency (e.g. embedded devices for networks, but also computational linguistics), or rapid/dynamic parser construction (e.g. in network traffic classification and in bioinformatics) as grammars are adapted.

Goal

The goal of this workshop is to bring together today’s experts in the fields of parser construction and application, especially across these diverse application areas. Participants will present currently ongoing work as well as explore the challenges that lie ahead. By bringing the whole community together (a rare occurrence, given the diversity of domain-specific conferences/workshops), we aim to create synergy and forge new collaborations.

Call for Submissions

We solicit talk proposals in the form of short abstracts (max. 2 pages). A good talk proposal describes an interesting position, demonstration, or early achievement. The submissions will be reviewed on relevance and clarity, and used to plan the mostly interactive sessions of the workshop day. Publication of accepted abstracts and slides on the website is voluntarily.

Organizers