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Telepathic parsers possible?
by Richard Dale on Tuesday 26/Jul/2005, @23:29
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'..but if the parser remembered that the old method used to exist it could make many simplifying assumptions'
You really talking about code refactoring here, where the IDE has parsed the source and formed an 'Abstract Syntax Tree' and symbol table of what the names used in the program code mean. Then because it knows about the structure of the code, and not just the correctness of the surface syntax, you could specify refactoring rules to transform the AST. For instance, you could add some text before or after a node, or you could move a node to another part of tree. Moving a method to another class, or renaming a method and fixing up all references to it in the code are examples of refactoring. The new parser generator and language parsers for KDevelop 4.0 will be able to use a common refactoring engine, which will work with ruby just as well as C++.
If a syntax checker was giving you errors based on what the code looked like 5 or 10 minutes ago it would just be really annoying, and feel more like the editor had only half saved your work. There's no way it would be possible to 'read you mind' to find out what you were intending to do. Hence, the need to work at a higher level than typing in lines of text, like using a refactoring engine. |
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