Code Generation

hackdaddy has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Tonight I wrote a Perl script to perform code generation the old-fashioned way by concatenating strings and pushing the strings on an array of text lines.

I used Java code as input, parsed it, and generated XML and Java code for a project at work. (Don't ask me why I am doing this, it's just what the project requires.) I had to do some mapping between function calls. The XML describes function calls but its types are much more primitive. I used a hash to map between types.

Anyway, I can sense there is a better way to generate chunks of XML and Java code using object-oriented Perl.

It would be nifty if I could build an Esperanto or intermediate object and then output it as XML or Java code as needed.

Any ideas or code samples are appreciated. Thanks.

Comment on Code Generation

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Re: Code Generation by spurperl (Priest) on Dec 16, 2005 at 09:36 UTC
I don't think you defined your problem well enough to get detailed advice. Some points are quite unclear: What is Esperanto ? (I assume you don't mean the spoken language) Did you actually write code that parses Java ? Using a module ? A full parser or some partial regex-hack ? Anyways, an intermediate representation for Java code, like for any code really, is a syntax tree. For XML, a good internal representation is the one used by Perl's modules - if your XML isn't too sophisticated, the HoAoH(...) approach of XML::Simple may be what you're looking for.	[reply]
Re^2: Code Generation by hackdaddy (Hermit) on Dec 16, 2005 at 09:54 UTC
When I said Esperanto, I meant figuratively an intermediate class that can output both XML and Java. I am parsing the method signatures of a Java class and creating XML that describes the signature. I am also creating Java from the signatures to create Java code for another Java class.	[reply]
Re: Code Generation by GrandFather (Saint) on Dec 16, 2005 at 11:11 UTC
If you use XML as the "Esperanto" the generation of the XML version is fairy simple and with tools like XML::TreeBuilder and XML::Twig, parsing the "Esperanto" (XML) is easy and, very likely, given a good design for the XML, the Java drops out easily too. DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel	[reply]


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