English

Really Embedding Domain-Specific Languages into C++

Programming Languages 2020-10-19 v1

Abstract

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are both pervasive and powerful, but remain difficult to integrate into large projects. As a result, while DSLs can bring distinct advantages in performance, reliability, and maintainability, their use often involves trading off other good software-engineering practices. In this paper, we describe an extension to the Clang C++ compiler to support syntax plugins, and we demonstrate how this mechanism allows making use of DSLs inside of a C++ code base without needing to separate the DSL source code from the surrounding C++ code.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.08439,
  title  = {Really Embedding Domain-Specific Languages into C++},
  author = {Hal Finkel and Alexander McCaskey and Tobi Popoola and Dmitry Lyakh and Johannes Doerfert},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.08439},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:24:20.891Z