Grace˜operator for changing order and scope of implicit parameters

• US 9,417,850 B2
• Filed: 01/10/2015
• Issued: 08/16/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 01/10/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Logics Research Centre
• Original Assignee: Logics Research Centre
• Inventors: Vanags, Mikus
• Primary Examiner(s): Dao, Thuy
• Assistant Examiner(s): Rivera, Anibal
• Application Number:
  US14/594,113
• Publication Number:
  US 20160202955A1
• Time in Patent Office: 584 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/31 Programming languages or programming paradigms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/41 Compilation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/443 Optimisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/456 Parallelism detection
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/74 Reverse engineering; Extracting design information from source code

Abstract

Implicit parameters and implicit arguments are useful in many programming paradigms including functional and logic programming. Implicit parameter declaration order is inferred from the subroutine parameter usage order in the subroutine body. It means that implicit parameters have limited possibilities to be declared in the same order as programmers want. The parameter ignorance operator # allows changing implicit parameter order, but usage of this operator leads to subroutine declaration syntax similar to the syntax of declaring subroutine parameters explicitly, partially losing syntax benefits gained of implicit parameters. In order to preserve all the benefits of implicit parameter usage and allow programmers to change implicit parameter declaration order and scope in concise way, the Grace˜ operator, which is presented in this document, was invented.

Claims

1. A method executed by a processor for reordering subroutine parameters in subroutine parameters list, where:

the method is based on a prefix, single operand operator form named ‘

Grace˜

’

in natural language;

the ‘

Grace˜

’

operator moves the parameter, to which the operator is applied, one position towards a first position in the subroutine parameters list;

and after reaching the first position in the subroutine parameters list, further application of the ‘

Grace˜

’

operator to the parameter is ignored and the parameter stays at the first position in the subroutine parameters list.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the ‘

Grace˜

’

operator accepts additional parameter N, which determines number of single movements, and priority of ‘

Grace˜

’

operator is higher than priority of any operator used to define algorithm in the body of the subroutine.

5. The method of claim 1, 2, 3 or 4, wherein resulting effect is determined by summing up all ‘

Grace˜

’

operator prefix and postfix forms in the way, that one single prefix movement neutralizes one single postfix movement and only the parameter movement in subroutine parameters list is performed according to claims 1, 2, 3 or 4.

3. A method executed by a processor for reordering subroutine parameters in a subroutine parameters list, where:

the method is based on a postfix, single operand operator form named ‘

Grace˜

’

in natural language;

the ‘

Grace˜

’

operator moves the parameter, to which the operator is applied, one position towards a last position in the subroutine parameters list;

after reaching the last position in the subroutine parameters list, further application of the ‘

Grace˜

’

operator to the parameter is ignored and the parameter stays at the last position in the subroutine parameters list.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the ‘

Grace˜

’

operator accepts additional parameter N, which determines number of single movements, and priority of ‘

Grace˜

’

operator is higher than priority of any operator used to define algorithm in the body of the subroutine.

8. The method of claim 6, 7, 3 or 4, wherein resulting effect is determined by summing up all ‘

Grace˜

’

operator prefix and postfix forms in the way, that one single prefix movement neutralizes one single postfix movement and only the parameter movement in the list of subroutine parameters is performed according to claims 6, 7, 3 or 4.

6. A method executed by a processor for reordering subroutine parameters in subroutine parameters list, where:

the method is based on a prefix, single operand operator form named ‘

Grace˜

’

in natural language;

the ‘

Grace˜

’

operator moves the parameter, to which the operator is applied, one position towards a first position in the subroutine parameters list;

moving subroutine parameter outside the subroutine parameters list to one position before the first position in the subroutine parameters list, leads to parameter removal from the existing subroutine parameters list and adding it to higher visibility scope in the subroutine parameters list;

if higher visibility scope subroutine does not exist, then such higher visibility subroutine context is created automatically;

redundant subroutine scopes are removed.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the ‘

Grace˜

’

operator accepts the additional parameter N, which determines number of single movements, and priority of ‘

Grace˜

’

operator is higher than priority of any operator used to define algorithm in the body of the subroutine.