The 37th IPP Symposium

Purpose-Built Languages in Systems Design

Michael Shapiro '96, Masters '97, Sun Microsystems

System calls and libraries aren't the only interfaces a system exports. Purpose-built languages have formed a critical component of system design, particularly in UNIX, for many years. This talk will discuss several case studies of purpose-built languages to illustrate design and implementation issues, attributes of successful languages, and open problems in systems that can be addressed with purpose-built languages.