TY - JOUR
T1 - Generator of efficient strongly typed abstract syntax trees in Java
AU - Brand, van den, M.G.J.
AU - Moreau, P.-E.
AU - Vinju, J.J.
PY - 2005
Y1 - 2005
N2 - Syntax trees are a very common data structure in language related tools. For example, compilers, interpreters, documentation generators and syntax-directed editors use them extensively to extract, transform, store and produce information that is key to their functionality. The authors present a Java back-end for ApiGen, a tool that generates implementations of abstract syntax trees. The generated code is characterised by strong typing combined with a generic interface and maximal sub-term sharing for memory efficiency and fast equality checking. The goal of this tool is to obtain safe and more efficient programming interfaces for abstract syntax trees. The contribution of this work is the combination of generating a strongly typed data-structure with maximal sub-term sharing in Java. Practical experience shows that this approach is beneficial for extremely large as well as smaller data types.
AB - Syntax trees are a very common data structure in language related tools. For example, compilers, interpreters, documentation generators and syntax-directed editors use them extensively to extract, transform, store and produce information that is key to their functionality. The authors present a Java back-end for ApiGen, a tool that generates implementations of abstract syntax trees. The generated code is characterised by strong typing combined with a generic interface and maximal sub-term sharing for memory efficiency and fast equality checking. The goal of this tool is to obtain safe and more efficient programming interfaces for abstract syntax trees. The contribution of this work is the combination of generating a strongly typed data-structure with maximal sub-term sharing in Java. Practical experience shows that this approach is beneficial for extremely large as well as smaller data types.
U2 - 10.1049/ip-sen:20041181
DO - 10.1049/ip-sen:20041181
M3 - Article
SN - 1364-5080
VL - 152
SP - 70
EP - 78
JO - IEE Proceedings - Software Engineering
JF - IEE Proceedings - Software Engineering
IS - 2
ER -