Canonical Abstract Syntax Trees

This paper presents Gom, a language for describing abstract syntax trees and generating a Java implementation for those trees. Gom includes features allowing the user to specify and modify the interface of the data structure. These features provide in particular the capability to maintain the internal representation of data in canonical form with respect to a rewrite system. This explicitly guarantees that the client program only manipulates normal forms for this rewrite system, a feature which is only implicitly used in many implementations

A Generic Framework for Automated Quality Assurance of Software Models –Implementation of an Abstract Syntax Tree

Abstract—Abstract Syntax Tree’s (AST) are used in language tools, such as compilers, language translators and transformers as well as analysers; to remove syntax and are therefore an ideal construct for a language independent tool. AST’s are also commonly used in static analysis. This increases the value of ASTs for use within a universal Quality Assurance (QA) tool. The Object Management Group (OMG) have outlined a Generic AST Meta-model (GASTM) which may be used to implement the internal representation (IR) for this tool. This paper discusses the implementation and modifications made to the previously published proposal, to use the Object Management Group developed Generic Abstract Syntax Tree Meta-model corecomponents as an internal representation for an automated quality assurance framework. Keywords—software quality assurance; software testing; automated software engineering; programming language paradigms; language independence; abstract syntax tree; static analysis; dynamic analysis I

Rules and Strategies in Java

International audienceIn this paper we present the essential feature we have considered when designing a new language based on rules and strategies. Relying on the implementation of Tom, we explain how these ingredients can be implemented and integrated in a Java environment

Rewriting Strategies in Java

International audienceIn any language designed to express transformations, the notion of rewrite rule is a key feature. Its conciseness as well as its strong theoretical foundations are essential. The notion of strategy is complementary: this describes how rules are applied. In this paper, we show how a high-level strategy language can be implemented in a Java setting. We present the integration of the visitor combinator design pattern into Tom. This corresponds to an interpreter for strategy expressions. To be more efficient, we present a compilation method based on bytecode specialization. This low-level transformation is expressed in Tom itself, using rules and strategies

Generator of efficient strongly typed abstract syntax trees in Java

Syntax trees are a very common data structure in language related tools. For example, compilers, interpreters, documentation generators and syntax-directed editors use them extensively to extract, transform, store and produce information that is key to their functionality. The authors present a Java back-end for ApiGen, a tool that generates implementations of abstract syntax trees. The generated code is characterised by strong typing combined with a generic interface and maximal sub-term sharing for memory efficiency and fast equality checking. The goal of this tool is to obtain safe and more efficient programming interfaces for abstract syntax trees. The contribution of this work is the combination of generating a strongly typed data-structure with maximal sub-term sharing in Java. Practical experience shows that this approach is beneficial for extremely large as well as smaller data types

Generator of efficient strongly typed abstract syntax trees in Java

Syntax trees are a very common data structure in language related tools. For example, compilers, interpreters, documentation generators and syntax-directed editors use them extensively to extract, transform, store and produce information that is key to their functionality. The authors present a Java back-end for ApiGen, a tool that generates implementations of abstract syntax trees. The generated code is characterised by strong typing combined with a generic interface and maximal sub-term sharing for memory efficiency and fast equality checking. The goal of this tool is to obtain safe and more efficient programming interfaces for abstract syntax trees. The contribution of this work is the combination of generating a strongly typed data-structure with maximal sub-term sharing in Java. Practical experience shows that this approach is beneficial for extremely large as well as smaller data types