Re: C parser yielding syntax tree data structure?

  (Jamie Andrews) wrote:
> For a research project, we're looking for a reliable parser for C
> that will take an ANSI C program and yield a tree representation of
> the program (as a Java or C++ object). Of course a grammar e.g. in
> jflex/jbison that will yield the same thing is fine too. We have been
> able to find some grammars and parsers, of unknown reliability, that
> don't yield a syntax tree; we want to avoid starting with a flaky
> parser and/or adding the syntax tree code.
>
> Preferably the tokens in the tree will contain information
> on the line number and character number of the token, but if it
> is sufficiently easy to add that code, then we can do that too.
>
> Thanks for any info you can give.


Linus Torvalds of Linux fame once wrote one of these called "sparse".
See http://freshmeat.net/projects/sparse/


I think the latest version is in
http://www.kernel.org/pub/scm/devel/sparse/ you need to use the "git"
version control system to download it unfortunately.


It doesn't give C++ or Java objects as an output. But, as you'll find
there is not much gained by treating a whole tree as an object, the
important thing is that it has a single root.


I have no idea how good this parser is, you'll have to find that out
for yourself. It's hard to tell how good any C parser is that doesn't
get heavy use, and hard enough to tell if a parser does get heavy use.

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