Re: tops (or another way) to semi-parse obj-c code

[Stefan Urbanek]

Hi,

On 2004-03-29 20:36:48 +0200 Ben Dougall <bend@freenet.co.uk> wrote:

> hiyer,
>
> i've asked this in a few places now -- not had too much luck.
>
> i want to semi-parse some objective-c code in a syntax aware manor the 
> command line tool tops seems possibly capable of this but i'm not completely 
> sure if it'll do what i want. i want to do various manipulations, but the 
> main one is to swap a specified variable name for another word without 
> messing with any other uses of the searched for word (such as method names).

concerning the ObjectiveC parsing framework, AFAIK there is no such available 
(at leas no opensource one). However, there are several projects taht are doing 
partial parsing of an ObjectiveC code. From those I know they are GNUstep 
applications, such as Gorm (GNUstep's Interface Builder) or CodeEditor.app (for 
syntax highlighting).

There is kind of specification for such framework at GNUstep wiki pages:

http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/FrameworkWishList

The idea behind the framework was to be able to share objectinve c parsing 
between applications. Another idea was to be able to do refactoring (and 
variable/class renaming), as you suggest. But that's all - noone has started to 
write it.

Even this email was not much help for you, it reports the state of the thing 
you are asing for.

Best regards,

Stefan Urbanek
--
http://stefan.agentfarms.net

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you 
win.
- Mahatma Gandhi