In computing, tombstone diagrams (or T-diagrams) consist of a set of “puzzle pieces” representing compilers and other related language processing programs. They are used to illustrate and reason about transformations from a source language (left of T) to a target language (right of T) realised in an implementation language (bottom of T). They are most commonly found describing complicated processes for bootstrapping, porting, and self-compiling of compilers, interpreters, and macro-processors.[1]
T-diagrams were first used for describing bootstrapping and cross-compiling compilers by Harvey Bratman in 1961,[2] who reshaped the diagrams originally introduced by Strong et al. (1958) to illustrate UNCOL. [3] Later on, others, including McKeeman et al. [4] and P.D. Terry,[1] explained the usage of T-diagrams with further detail. T-diagrams are also now used to describe client-server interconnectivity on the World Wide Web.[5] A teaching tool TDiag has been implemented at Leipzig University, Germany.[6]