Malloy, Brian A. and Gibbs, Tanton H. and Power, James F. (2003) Decorating tokens to facilitate recognition of ambiguous language constructs. Software: Practice and Experience, 33 (1). pp. 19-39. ISSN 0038-0644

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Abstract

Software tools are fundamental to the comprehension, analysis, testing and debugging of application systems. A necessary first step in the development of many tools is the construction of a parser front-end that can recognize the implementation language of the system under development. In this paper, we describe our use of token decoration to facilitate recognition of ambiguous language constructs. We apply our approach to the C++ language since its grammar is replete with ambiguous derivations such as the declaration/expression and template-declaration/expression ambiguity. We describe our implementation of a parser front-end for C++, keystone, and we describe our results in decorating tokens for our test suite including the examples from Clause Three of the C++ standard. We are currently exploiting the keystone front-end to develop a taxonomy for implementation-based class testing and to reverse-engineer Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagrams.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	grammar; symbol table; parser; Unified Modeling Language; design pattern; the Facade and Decorator design patterns;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Computer Science
Item ID:	8232
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.493
Depositing User:	Dr. James Power
Date Deposited:	22 May 2017 15:45
Journal or Publication Title:	Software: Practice and Experience
Publisher:	Wiley
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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