A language-independent specification (LIS) is a programming language specification providing a common

interface Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Int ...

usable for defining

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

applicable toward arbitrary

language binding In programming and software design, binding is an application programming interface (API) that provides glue code specifically made to allow a programming language to use a foreign library or operating system service (one that is not native to th ...

s. LIS's are language-agnostic; they mitigate the risk that a certain language binding might reduce compatibility with other languages. An ideal LIS allows the language bindings to take advantage of features of a programming language uncompromisingly. Examples of LIS include

Interface description language interface description language or interface definition language (IDL), is a generic term for a language that lets a program or object written in one language communicate with another program written in an unknown language. IDLs describe an inter ...

, Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator and

Common Language Infrastructure The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is an open specification and technical standard originally developed by Microsoft and standardized by ISO/IEC (ISO/IEC 23271) and Ecma International (ECMA 335) that describes executable code and a ...

Recursive transcompiling A source-to-source translator, source-to-source compiler (S2S compiler), transcompiler, or transpiler is a type of translator that takes the source code of a program written in a programming language as its input and produces an equivalent so ...

can be used to distribute a language independent specification across many different technologies, with each technology potentially keeping an authoritative description of a different part of the specification. Recursive transcompiling provides the general methodology for distributing this authoritative information through the rest of the

derivative code Derivative code or Chameleon code is source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code ...

pipeline.

See also