Procedure calling conventions are used to provide uniform procedure-

call interfaces. Applications, such as compilers and debuggers,

which generate, or process procedures at the machinelanguage

abstraction level require knowledge of the calling convention.

In this paper, we develop a formal model for procedure

calling conventions called P-FSA’s. Using this model, we are able

to ensure several completeness and consistency properties of calling

conventions. Currently, applications that manipulate procedures

implement conventions in an ad-hoc manner. The resulting

code is complicated with details, difficult to maintain, and often

riddled with errors. To alleviate the situation, we introduce a calling

convention specification language, called CCL. The combination

of CCL and P-FSA’s facilitates the accurate specification of

conventions that can be shown to be both consistent and complete.