Releasing ParseTree 1.3.3

Published 2005-02-01 @ 12:28

Tagged parsetree, metaruby, ruby

I am releasing ParseTree 1.3.3 today in preparation of our ruby2c release (also today). Changes in ParseTree are minor, but necessary for ruby2c.

ParseTree is a C extension (using RubyInline) that extracts the parse tree for an entire class or a specific method and returns it as a s-expression (aka sexp) using ruby’s arrays, strings, symbols, and integers.

As an example:

  def conditional1(arg1)
    if arg1 == 0 then
      return 1
    end
    return 0
  end

becomes:

  [:defn,
    :conditional1,
    [:scope,
     [:block,
      [:args, :arg1],
      [:if,
       [:call, [:lvar, :arg1], :==, [:array, [:lit, 0]]],
       [:return, [:lit, 1]],
       nil],
      [:return, [:lit, 0]]]]]

Features/Problems:

• Uses RubyInline, so it just drops in.
• Includes SexpProcessor and CompositeSexpProcessor.

• Allows you to write very clean filters.

• Includes show.rb, which lets you quickly snoop code.
• Includes abc.rb, which lets you get abc metrics on code.

• abc metrics = numbers of assignments, branches, and calls. whitespace independent metric for method complexity.

• Only works on methods in classes/modules, not arbitrary code.
• Does not work on the core classes, as they are not ruby (yet).

Changes:

• 3 minor enhancement

• Cleaned up parse_tree_abc output
• Patched up null class names (delegate classes are weird!)

• Added UnknownNodeError and switched SyntaxError over to it.

• 2 bug fixes

• Fixed BEGIN node handling to recurse instead of going flat.
• FINALLY fixed the weird compiler errors seen on some versions of gcc 3 .4.x related to type punned pointers.