Re: [boost] The Booster

From: Daniel Frey (daniel.frey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-10-08 08:31:34

Paul Baxter wrote:
> 
> FWIW you might want to check out
> http://www.cuj.com/articles/1999/9903/9903b/9903b.htm
> for a discussion of exactly the sorts of problems you're trying to solve.
> Interesting read.

Nice article. Indeed, it shows that reducing types is not always useful.
During the development of the Booster, I played around with macros to
export typedefs. The Booster parsed it's input to add rules on-the-fly
and cut these errors produced by the macros out. Afterwards, it was able
to replace the typedefs by their symbolic name. I removed this as it
shows that typedefs cannot be back-referenced by a tool like mine, only
the compiler could do it and - even worse - you don't want to see these
replacements (as mentioned in the article). It is therefore very
important not to overuse the tool as it is very easy to hide important
information. I therefore tried to supply only rules that should not
yield surprises in the converted output.

> I do remember reading another article which possibly is the one where a perl
> script was developed (and from which Booster's idea originated.)
> Does anyone have a link to it?

Booster originated in a perl script that I wrote on my own, being sick
of 2K-error-messages for a single forgotton comma. It consisted of just
the rules in a loop, no more (basically). But if you know of other tools
that try to achive the same goal, I'd be glad to hear about them.

Regards, Daniel

--
Daniel Frey
aixigo AG - financial training, research and technology
Schloß-Rahe-Straße 15, 52072 Aachen, Germany
fon: [phone], fax: [phone]
eMail: daniel.frey_at_[hidden], web: http://www.aixigo.de