• Georg Wrede <georg.wrede nospam.org> Sep 15 2005
• Larry Evans <cppljevans cos-internet.com> Nov 03 2005
• Georg Wrede <georg.wrede nospam.org> Nov 04 2005

I know there are several directions to go to if I want to end up with a 
  tree structure that represents a program file's lexed and parsed 
contents. Some of them better than the other, in some aspect.

What I'm looking for is to be able to read D source as input, parse it 
to a tree, then output it as (almost) the same source.

Why??? Well, I need to do this to "first get it right". Then I want to 
try out a few ideas on how to define details of (the now infamous and 
almost entirely forgotten) meta language that I raved about last winter.

If it works, then we can start thinking of how (or why) it should be 
incorporated into D or DMD, or neither.

(If given a choice, I'd slightly prefer DMD over GDC, even though I'll 
be working both in Linux and Windows.)

On 09/15/2005 04:02 PM, Georg Wrede wrote:
 I know there are several directions to go to if I want to end up with a 
  tree structure that represents a program file's lexed and parsed 
 contents. Some of them better than the other, in some aspect.
 
 What I'm looking for is to be able to read D source as input, parse it 
 to a tree, then output it as (almost) the same source.


What about emulating boost's spirit library?

   http://www.boost.org/libs/spirit/index.html

There's also a prototype in the same "spirit" at:

   http://boost-consulting.com/vault/

in

   /Template Metaprogramming/proto_static_disp.zip

it's much simpler than spirit; so, it may be easier
to start transformation from there.

Larry Evans wrote:
 On 09/15/2005 04:02 PM, Georg Wrede wrote:
 
 I know there are several directions to go to if I want to end up
 with a  tree structure that represents a program file's lexed and
 parsed contents. Some of them better than the other, in some
 aspect.
 
 What I'm looking for is to be able to read D source as input, parse
 it to a tree, then output it as (almost) the same source.


 What about emulating boost's spirit library?
 
 http://www.boost.org/libs/spirit/index.html


Whew! Thaks!

Spent 6 hours reading through the entire manual!

This is awsome stuff. Imagine that you can write source code just like 
always, and within it lines that look like "normal" grammar definitions 
-- without any jumping or gymnastics. Just unbelievable.

While the template "programming language" in C++ is a nightmare, some of 
these guys really can make it shine! And to think that the end result 
turns out to be so incredibly easy, usable, and obvious!

And the manual, and the quick reference. Oh boy!

---

And as a Linux user, I've had this all along -- what an embarrasment. No 
downloads, configuring, nothing. Just try out the examples and ideas, 
right now.

This is almost enough to make me go back to C++ (no panic, just for this 
one thing, nothing else), for a while to try this out.

Man, D metaprogramming features should be relentlessly pursued until we 
can _proove_ that anything the C++ guys could do is doable in D!