Posted by Thierry Goubier on Jun 29, 2015; 4:22pm
URL: https://forum.world.st/AST-Inspector-tp4834638p4834646.html

Hi Mark,

Le 29/06/2015 18:04, Mark Rizun a écrit :
> Hi, everyone!
>
> When I was exploring AST in Pharo, at the beginning it seemed a bit
> confusing for me how the tree looks like, or which part of code some node
> represents etc. As I'm working with ASTs for a while now, still not an
> expert ;), I decided to make a simple AST Inspector for myself and everyone
> that needs it. Hopefully, this inspector will make peoples lives easier when
> learning ASTs. For now its very raw. Inspector shows the code and its AST
> representation visually like in the picture.

Cool.

Need a bit of anti-aliasing for the round shapes :)

I wonder how it will look with a long method: they usually have rather
flat ASTs that would result in a wide diagram.

> Also you can select/deselect a nodes of AST an see which part of code it
> represents (like in the picture above). Functionality ends here :) What do
> you think about it? Maybe you guys have some cool ideas for this inspector?

I used that kind of inspector a lot for my work, but I usually just
represent the tree as a normal tree node morph (and with the exact
select the node => select the source).

Some of the added ones I use is showing the CFG (control flow graph),
eventually a SSA (Single Signed Assignment) or IR.

I tend to base them on the SmaCC AST API, so like that they work with
all programming languages, not only Smalltalk.

I tried to use GT-Inspector for that but it didn't work.

Thierry