SEMINAR

Interpreters and Virtual Machines

 

Interpreters are known among programmers of scripting languages, such as Perl, Tcl, or Python, but also among end users of interactive statistics packages, such as R. With the adoption of Java and .NET, the research interest in interpreter technology and virtual machines that interpret intermediate code has increased.

The goal of the seminar is to take a close look at the inner working of interpreters and their underlying technology. Topics covered in the seminar include:

• the Java virtual machine;
• the .NET common language runtime;
• threaded code techniques;
• stack machines and FORTH;
• data programming in R;
• optimization of interpreter implementations;
• generators for interpreters;
• formal semantics of interpreters.

The seminar primarily aims at master students interested in programming languages, software engineering, formal methods, verification, or bioinformatics.

The preliminary meeting ("Vorbesprechung") takes place on Wednesday, October 29, at 2 p.m. in room 328, building E1.3. If you are interested in the seminar, please send an email to:

padberg@cs.uni-saarland.de
Please include your name, student id ("Matrikelnummer"), and semester of study. This will help me prepare the preliminary meeting.

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Dr. Frank Padberg, October 11, 2008