CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonc++abstract-syntax-tree
Jeff
Jeff

Reputation: 4433

Get the AST from a C/C++ code without compiling from a Python application

I have been reading this article (described here) and working on my own implementation of this. In the article they use an abstract syntax tree and a few other features to create a deep learning model for source code attribution.

Is it possible to get the abstract syntax tree of a c or c++ application from a Python application?

My research seems to show that this cannot be reliably done unless you can compile the code. Is there a way to get portions of it using a python script?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1980

Answers (1)

Jeffrey
Jeffrey

Reputation: 11430

In C++ you need to actually compile a snippet to get its AST.

You could guesswork from a snippet, but it would offer no guarantee. The reason for this is that code from elsewhere (headers, previous code) might affect the meaning of any piece of code.

Consider:

int x = y + z;

What do you expect the AST to be ? An addition and an assignment operator.

Now, what if z is Foo z;

class Foo
{
   operator int() { /* bunch of operations,*/ return 0;}
}

Suddenly, your AST contains more stuff.

Then you can also have:

#define z (y * y)

Again, your AST changes.

So, to get it correct, your need the whole thing, parsing the whole source, includes, running pre-processor, resolving templates, visibility, overloads.

In practice, people then use something like LLVM and pass the responsibility to an actual compiler.

Upvotes: 3

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