2026-02-12: Shriram Krishnamurthi (Brown University)

Thu, 5 Feb 2026 16:48:50 +0000

Shriram Krishnamurthi (Brown University)

Resugaring: Lifting Semantic Features through Syntactic Sugar

Abstract

Syntactic sugar is pervasive in language technology. It is used to shrink the size of a core language; to define domain-specific languages; and even to let programmers extend their language. Unfortunately, syntactic sugar is eliminated by transformation, so when the system provides feedback, it is in terms of a program that is unfamiliar to the authors. Thus, tool authors are forced to choose between their convenience and that of the programmer.

We address this conflict by showing how to lift core language features to present them in terms of the surface syntax. We have performed this research over three different features: execution traces, binding, and type rules. In each case we identify properties expected of the lifting and prove that our techniques satisfy these.

More broadly, though syntactic sugar is a central area of programming languages, it remains under-represented in the research literature. We briefly examine some other elements of a research agenda for this area.

2026-02-12 16:00:00 UTC
LT1414a