A Comparative Study of Incremental Attribute Grammar Solutions to Name Resolution

In English Attribute grammars are useful in integrated editing environments for
obtaining automatic incremental compilation features. However, traditional attribute grammars use aggregated values during name resolution, resulting in large sets of affected attribute instances after edits. In this paper, we show how reference attribute grammars (RAGs) can significantly reduce the number of affected attributes. We also introduce a notion of cache independent attributes used to limit propagation after edits. Our results indicate that RAGs are a highly viable alternative for use in editing environments.