Vortex RTL Textual Description Grammar

The Cecil Group

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington
Box 352350, Seattle, Washington 98195-2350
cecil@cs.washington.edu

Vortex 3.0
December 9, 1998

This document describes the grammar for the textual form of the Vortex compiler's RTL intermediate language. This is the language used to communicate between the C++, Modula-3, Java, and Smalltalk front-ends and Vortex, and is also used to describe some Cecil primitives.

Warning: the RTL language was not designed from scratch, but rather evolved via accretion of features. It is slowly being reworked to make the operators more general and language-independent, but this process is not complete.

In our EBNF notation, vertical bars (|) are used to separate alternatives. Braces ({...}) surround strings that can be repeated zero or more times. Brackets ([...]) surround an optional string. Parentheses are used for grouping. Literal tokens are included in quotation marks ("...").