Re: Generating Source Code.

dara_gallagher@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I'd appreciate any pointers/references on the subject of generating
> human readable source from an AST. I've looked at some of the source
> code pretty printers which are floating around but all of them seem
> are relatively simple and are based on lexical analysis. I realize
> that "human readable" is a subjective term and that for any particular
> language people will have preferences regarding indentation, line
> splitting etc.


We have a general operation-table-driven PrettyPrinter in
CobolTransformer http://www.siber.com/sct/. It takes the Program Tree
(what you call AST) and turns it back into a beautified program and
most of its intelligence is contained in code generation table (it's
like K&R code generation table on steroids).


Every operation on a tree has a code generation string that specifies
the code layout for the operation. We can do indentation, printing at
fixed positions, printing a list of items starting at the same column.


The approach that we use is language-independent (CodeTransformer),
but so far it was only applied to Cobol (probably because C/C++ is
less likely to be in need of en masse automated conversion).


Vadim Maslov

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.