--- a/bsc-projects-14.html Fri Sep 05 16:26:51 2014 +0100
+++ b/bsc-projects-14.html Fri Sep 19 11:12:02 2014 +0100
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@
necessary.” I am always happy to supervise like-minded students.</H4>
<ul class="striped">
-<li> <H4>[CU1] Regular Expression Matching and Partial Derivatives</H4>
+<li> <H4>[CU1] Regular Expression Matching and Derivatives</H4>
<p>
<B>Description:</b>
@@ -56,15 +56,15 @@
mistaken: in fact they are still an active research area. For example
<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/ppdp12-part-deriv-sub-match.pdf">this paper</A>
about regular expression matching and partial derivatives was presented last summer at the international
- PPDP'12 conference. They even work on a followup paper that has not yet been presented at any
- conference. The task in this project is to implement their results.</p>
+ FLOPS'14 conference. The task in this project is to implement their results.</p>
<p>The background for this project is that some regular expressions are
“<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">evil</A>”
and can “stab you in the back” according to
this <A HREF="http://tech.blog.cueup.com/regular-expressions-will-stab-you-in-the-back">blog post</A>.
For example, if you use in <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A> or
- in <A HREF="http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/">Ruby</A> (probably also other mainstream programming languages) the
+ in <A HREF="http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/">Ruby</A> (or also a number of other mainstream programming languages according to this
+ <A HREF="http://www. computerbytesman.com/redos/">blog</A>) the
innocently looking regular expression <code>a?{28}a{28}</code> and match it, say, against the string
<code>aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa</code> (that is 28 <code>a</code>s), you will soon notice that your CPU usage goes to 100%. In fact,
Python and Ruby need approximately 30 seconds of hard work for matching this string. You can try it for yourself:
@@ -76,7 +76,9 @@
<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> (and also Java) are almost immune from such
attacks as they can deal with strings of up to 4,300 <code>a</code>s in less than a second. But if you scale
the regular expression and string further to, say, 4,600 <code>a</code>s, then you get a <code>StackOverflowError</code>
- potentially crashing your program.
+ potentially crashing your program. Moreover (beside the problem of being painfully slow) according to this
+ <A HREF="http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Regex_Posix">report</A>
+ nearly all POSIX regular expression matchers are actually buggy.
</p>
<p>
@@ -99,18 +101,19 @@
<p>
Now the authors from the
- <A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/ppdp12-part-deriv-sub-match.pdf">PPDP'12-paper</A> mentioned
+ <A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/ppdp12-part-deriv-sub-match.pdf">FLOPS'14-paper</A> mentioned
above claim they are even faster than me and can deal with even more features of regular expressions
(for example subexpression matching, which my rainy-afternoon matcher cannot). I am sure they thought
about the problem much longer than a single afternoon. The task
in this project is to find out how good they actually are by implementing the results from their paper.
- Their approach is based on the concept of partial derivatives introduced in 1994 by
+ Their approach is based on the concept of derivatives introduced in 1994 by
<A HREF="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.56.2509&rep=rep1&type=pdf">Valentin Antimirov</A>.
I used them once myself in a <A HREF="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/Publications/rexp.pdf">paper</A>
in order to prove the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myhill–Nerode_theorem">Myhill-Nerode theorem</A>.
So I know they are worth their money. Still, it would be interesting to actually compare their results
with my simple rainy-afternoon matcher and potentially “blow away” the regular expression matchers
- in Python and Ruby (and possibly in Scala too).
+ in Python and Ruby (and possibly in Scala too). The application would be to implement a fast lexer for
+ programming languages.
</p>
<p>
@@ -131,6 +134,7 @@
<A HREF="http://www.diku.dk/~torbenm/Basics/">online book</A> very helpful.
Test cases for “<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">evil</A>”
regular expressions can be obtained from <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">here</A>.
+
</p>
<p>
@@ -179,7 +183,7 @@
<A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">JavaScript</A>. This is the language that is supported by most
browsers and therefore is a favourite
vehicle for Web-programming. Some call it <B>the</B> scripting language of the Web.
- Unfortunately, JavaScript is probably one of the worst
+ Unfortunately, JavaScript is also probably one of the worst
languages to program in (being designed and released in a hurry). <B>But</B> it can be used as a convenient target
for translating programs from other languages. In particular there are two
very optimised subsets of JavaScript that can be used for this purpose:
@@ -239,52 +243,11 @@
</p>
<p>
- <B>PS:</B> Compiler projects, like this [CU2] and [CU3], consistently received high marks in the past.
+ <B>PS:</B> Compiler projects, like this [CU2] and [CU6], consistently received high marks in the past.
I suprvised four so far and none of them received a mark below 70% - one even was awarded a prize.
</p>
-<li> <H4>[CU3] Language Translator into JavaScript</H4>
-
- <p>
- <b>Description:</b>
- <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">JavaScript</A> is a language that is supported by most
- browsers and therefore is a favourite
- vehicle for Web-programming. Some call it <B>the</B> scripting language of the Web.
- Unfortunately, JavaScript is probably one of the worst
- languages to program in (being designed and released in a hurry). <B>But</B> it can be used as a convenient target
- for translating programs from other languages. In particular there are two
- very optimised subsets of JavaScript that can be used for this purpose:
- one is <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and the other is
- <A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>.
- There is a <A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki/Tutorial">tutorial</A> for emscripten
- and an impressive <A HREF="http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/">demo</A> which runs the
- <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine">Unreal Engine 3</A>
- in a browser with spectacular speed. This was achieved by compiling the
- C-code of the Unreal Engine to the LLVM intermediate language and then translating the LLVM
- code to JavaScript.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- <B>Skills:</B>
- This project is about exploring these two subsets of JavaScript and implement a translator
- of a small language into them. This is similar to the project [CU2] above and requires
- similar skills. In addition it would be good to have already some familiarity with JavaScript.
- There are plenty of <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">tutorials</A> on the Web.
- <A HREF="http://jsbooks.revolunet.com">Here</A> is a list of free books on JavaScript.
- This is a project for a student who wants to get more familiar with JavaScript and Web-programming.
- A project from which you can draw inspiration is this
- <A HREF="http://jlongster.com/2012/01/04/outlet-my-lisp-to-javascript-experiment.html">List-to-JavaScript</A>
- translator. <A HREF="https://bitbucket.org/ktg/parenjs/overview">Here</A> is another such project.
- And <A HREF="https://github.com/viclib/liscript">another</A> in less than 100 lines of code.
- <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoffeeScript">Coffeescript</A> is a similar project
- except that it is already quite <A HREF="http://coffeescript.org">mature</A>. And finally not to
- forget <A HREF="http://www.typescriptlang.org">TypeScript</A> developed by Microsoft. The main
- difference between these projects and this one is that they translate into relatively high-level
- JavaScript code; none of them use the much lower levels <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and
- <A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>.
-</p>
-
-<li> <H4>[CU4] Slide-Making in the Web-Age</H4>
+<li> <H4>[CU3] Slide-Making in the Web-Age</H4>
<p>
The standard technology for writing scientific papers in Computer Science is to use
@@ -345,10 +308,13 @@
parse a language and translate it to a suitable part of JavaScript using
appropriate libraries. Tutorials for JavaScript are <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">here</A>.
A parser generator for JavaScript is <A HREF="http://pegjs.majda.cz">here</A>. There are probably also
- others.
+ others. If you want to avoid JavaScript there are a number of alternatives: for example the
+ <A HREF="http://elm-lang.org">Elm</A>
+ language has been especially designed for implementing easily interactive animations, which would be
+ very conveninet for this project.
</p>
-<li> <H4>[CU5] An Online Student Voting System</H4>
+<li> <H4>[CU4] An Online Student Voting System</H4>
<p>
<B>Description:</B>
@@ -416,77 +382,14 @@
<p>
<B>Skills:</B>
- In order to provide convenience for the lecturer, this project needs very good web-programming skills. A
+ In order to provide convenience for the lecturer, this project needs very good web-programming skills. A
<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)">hacker mentality</A>
- (see above) is probably very beneficial: web-programming is an area that only emerged recently and
+ (see above) is probably also very beneficial: web-programming is an area that only emerged recently and
many tools still lack maturity. You probably have to experiment a lot with several different
languages and tools.
</p>
-<li> <H4>[CU6] An Infrastructure for Displaying and Animating Code in a Web-Browser</H4>
-
-<p>
- <B>Description:</B>
- The project aim is to implement an infrastructure for displaying and
- animating code in a web-browser. The infrastructure should be agnostic
- with respect to the programming language, but should be configurable.
- I envisage something smaller than the projects
- <A HREF="http://www.pythontutor.com">here</A> (for Python),
- <A HREF="http://ideone.com">here</A> (for Java),
- <A HREF="http://codepad.org">here</A> (for multiple languages),
- <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_intro">here</A> (for HTML)
- <A HREF="http://repl.it/languages/JavaScript">here</A> (for JavaScript),
- and <A HREF="http://www.scala-tour.com/#/welcome">here</A> (for Scala).
- </p>
-
- <p>
- The tasks in this project are being able (1) to lex and parse languages and (2) to write an interpreter.
- The goal is to implement this as much as possible in a language-agnostic fashion.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- <B>Skills:</B>
- Good skill in lexing and language parsing, as well as being fluent with web programming (for
- example JavaScript).
- </p>
-
-
-<li> <H4>[CU7] Implementation of a Distributed Clock-Synchronisation Algorithm developed at NASA</H4>
-
- <p>
- <B>Description:</B>
- There are many algorithms for synchronising clocks. This
- <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>
- describes a new algorithm for clocks that communicate by exchanging
- messages and thereby reach a state in which (within some bound) all clocks are synchronised.
- A slightly longer and more detailed paper about the algorithm is
- <A HREF="http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20110020812">here</A>.
- The point of this project is to implement this algorithm and simulate networks of clocks.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- <B>Literature:</B>
- There is a wide range of literature on clock synchronisation algorithms.
- Some pointers are given in this
- <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>,
- which describes the algorithm to be implemented in this project. Pointers
- are given also <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_synchronization">here</A>.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- <B>Skills:</B>
- In order to implement a simulation of a network of clocks, you need to tackle
- concurrency. You can do this for example in the programming language
- <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> with the help of the
- <A HREF="http://akka.io">Akka</a> library. This library enables you to send messages
- between different <I>actors</I>. <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/node/242">Here</A>
- are some examples that explain how to implement exchanging messages between actors.
- </p>
-
-
-
-
-<li> <H4>[CU8] Raspberry Pi's and Arduinos</H4>
+<li> <H4>[CU5] Raspberry Pi's and Arduinos</H4>
<p>
<B>Description:</B>
@@ -501,7 +404,7 @@
floods of <A HREF="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=raspberry+pi">online</A> material).
Google just released a
<A HREF="http://googlecreativelab.github.io/coder/">framework</A>
- for web-programming and for turning Raspberry Pi's into webservers.
+ for web-programming on Raspberry Pi's truning them into webservers.
</p>
<p>
@@ -560,6 +463,109 @@
</center>
</p>
+<li> <H4>[CU6] Language Translator into JavaScript</H4>
+
+ <p>
+ <b>Description:</b>
+ <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">JavaScript</A> is a language that is supported by most
+ browsers and therefore is a favourite
+ vehicle for Web-programming. Some call it <B>the</B> scripting language of the Web.
+ Unfortunately, JavaScript is probably one of the worst
+ languages to program in (being designed and released in a hurry). <B>But</B> it can be used as a convenient target
+ for translating programs from other languages. In particular there are two
+ very optimised subsets of JavaScript that can be used for this purpose:
+ one is <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and the other is
+ <A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>.
+ There is a <A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki/Tutorial">tutorial</A> for emscripten
+ and an impressive <A HREF="http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/">demo</A> which runs the
+ <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine">Unreal Engine 3</A>
+ in a browser with spectacular speed. This was achieved by compiling the
+ C-code of the Unreal Engine to the LLVM intermediate language and then translating the LLVM
+ code to JavaScript.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ <B>Skills:</B>
+ This project is about exploring these two subsets of JavaScript and implement a translator
+ of a small language into them. This is similar to the project [CU2] above and requires
+ similar skills. In addition it would be good to have already some familiarity with JavaScript.
+ There are plenty of <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">tutorials</A> on the Web.
+ <A HREF="http://jsbooks.revolunet.com">Here</A> is a list of free books on JavaScript.
+ This is a project for a student who wants to get more familiar with JavaScript and Web-programming.
+ A project from which you can draw inspiration is this
+ <A HREF="http://jlongster.com/2012/01/04/outlet-my-lisp-to-javascript-experiment.html">List-to-JavaScript</A>
+ translator. <A HREF="https://bitbucket.org/ktg/parenjs/overview">Here</A> is another such project.
+ And <A HREF="https://github.com/viclib/liscript">another</A> in less than 100 lines of code.
+ <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoffeeScript">Coffeescript</A> is a similar project
+ except that it is already quite <A HREF="http://coffeescript.org">mature</A>. And finally not to
+ forget <A HREF="http://www.typescriptlang.org">TypeScript</A> developed by Microsoft. The main
+ difference between these projects and this one is that they translate into relatively high-level
+ JavaScript code; none of them use the much lower levels <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and
+ <A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<li> <H4>[CU7] An Infrastructure for Displaying and Animating Code in a Web-Browser</H4>
+
+<p>
+ <B>Description:</B>
+ The project aim is to implement an infrastructure for displaying and
+ animating code in a web-browser. The infrastructure should be agnostic
+ with respect to the programming language, but should be configurable.
+ I envisage something smaller than the projects
+ <A HREF="http://www.pythontutor.com">here</A> (for Python),
+ <A HREF="http://ideone.com">here</A> (for Java),
+ <A HREF="http://codepad.org">here</A> (for multiple languages),
+ <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_intro">here</A> (for HTML)
+ <A HREF="http://repl.it/languages/JavaScript">here</A> (for JavaScript),
+ and <A HREF="http://www.scala-tour.com/#/welcome">here</A> (for Scala).
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ The tasks in this project are being able (1) to lex and parse languages and (2) to write an interpreter.
+ The goal is to implement this as much as possible in a language-agnostic fashion.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ <B>Skills:</B>
+ Good skill in lexing and language parsing, as well as being fluent with web programming (for
+ example JavaScript).
+ </p>
+
+
+<li> <H4>[CU8] Implementation of a Distributed Clock-Synchronisation Algorithm developed at NASA</H4>
+
+ <p>
+ <B>Description:</B>
+ There are many algorithms for synchronising clocks. This
+ <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>
+ describes a new algorithm for clocks that communicate by exchanging
+ messages and thereby reach a state in which (within some bound) all clocks are synchronised.
+ A slightly longer and more detailed paper about the algorithm is
+ <A HREF="http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20110020812">here</A>.
+ The point of this project is to implement this algorithm and simulate networks of clocks.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ <B>Literature:</B>
+ There is a wide range of literature on clock synchronisation algorithms.
+ Some pointers are given in this
+ <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>,
+ which describes the algorithm to be implemented in this project. Pointers
+ are given also <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_synchronization">here</A>.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ <B>Skills:</B>
+ In order to implement a simulation of a network of clocks, you need to tackle
+ concurrency. You can do this for example in the programming language
+ <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> with the help of the
+ <A HREF="http://akka.io">Akka</a> library. This library enables you to send messages
+ between different <I>actors</I>. <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/node/242">Here</A>
+ are some examples that explain how to implement exchanging messages between actors.
+ </p>
+
<li> <H4>[CU9] Proving the Correctness of Programs</H4>
<p>
@@ -606,7 +612,7 @@
</TABLE>
<P>
-<!-- hhmts start --> Last modified: Tue Aug 5 17:37:49 BST 2014 <!-- hhmts end -->
+<!-- hhmts start --> Last modified: Fri Sep 19 11:11:36 BST 2014 <!-- hhmts end -->
<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer">[Validate this page.]</a>
</BODY>
</HTML>