"Andrej Mitrovic" <andrej.mitrov...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.3528.1302836832.4748.digitalmars-d-annou...@puremagic.com... > So could your library be used to implement an alternative for HTOD? Or > more simply put, could I use this to do (simple) transformations of C > code?
C code is admittedly a bit tricky because it uses a preprocessor. But in general, yes, Goldie can be used transform source. The way it would work is like this: 1. Define a grammar for the "input" language. There's an ANSI C grammar here, but I haven't looked at it, so I don't know how good it is: http://www.devincook.com/goldparser/grammars/index.htm An introduction to the grammar description langauge is here: http://www.semitwist.com/goldie/Start/Grammar/ 2. Use Goldie to parse the input. Details here: http://www.semitwist.com/goldie/Start/HowToUse/ 3. Once Goldie's parsed the input, it will give you a parse tree (it'll be structured based on the grammar you used). You can then walk the tree and do whatever you want with it. I don't recommend actually modifying the parse tree that Goldie gives you in-place, since the interface isn't really designed for that right now (though you may still be able to make it work). But you can walk it and either build up your own tree structure, or convert it to text however you want, etc. Actually, you can even take a look at what the parse tree you'll get back will look like before writing any code: Use the included Goldie parse ( http://www.semitwist.com/goldie/Tools/Parse/ ) to parse a file according to whatever grammar you want to use. It'll save the parse tree to JSON. Then you can inspect the parse tree with this: ( http://www.semitwist.com/goldie/Tools/JsonViewer/ ). But try to use just a small sample file: Parse trees tend to get very big, very fast and JsonViewer is written in C# and can't handle large files very well. Since you're talking about C, you'll probably want to run your original C code through the "preprocess-only" option of a real C compiler. (I *think* DMC will do that.) Then parse the resulting "preprocessed C" files with Goldie. (Although if your goal is an HTOD-like tool, maybe you would need to deal with the original un-preprocessed source directly. If Golde's grammar langauge doesn't seem quite up to the task, it probably wouldn't bee too hard to just manually make a basic C preprocessor.) Right now, the grammar description format isn't really very good as describing preprocessors (a limitation Goldie inherited from GOLD Parser Builder). But fixing that limitation is one of the things on my TODO list for Goldie. If you do try this, I'd love to hear how it works out :) Even if you encounter any problems, it would be very helpful for me to know. Haven't gotten a whole lot of feedback yet.