Hello all!

This is my first post on the forums. I'm interested in possibly creating a refactoring tool for D for my MSc dissertation (I notice there is currently no refactoring in D?). I wanted to ask if this is possible with D's current state?

More specifically:
- Can I easily access things such as the AST?

On Monday, 2 March 2015 at 21:50:46 UTC, Jamie wrote:
> Hello all!
>
> This is my first post on the forums. I'm interested in possibly creating a refactoring tool for D for my MSc dissertation (I notice there is currently no refactoring in D?). I wanted to ask if this is possible with D's current state?
>
> More specifically:
> - Can I easily access things such as the AST?

This should save you a lot of time: https://github.com/Hackerpilot/libdparse

Thanks, I'll give it a look :)

On 3/03/2015 10:50 a.m., Jamie wrote:
> Hello all!
>
> This is my first post on the forums. I'm interested in possibly creating
> a refactoring tool for D for my MSc dissertation (I notice there is
> currently no refactoring in D?). I wanted to ask if this is possible
> with D's current state?
>
> More specifically:
> - Can I easily access things such as the AST?

You may also be interested in SDC[0].

[0] https://github.com/deadalnix/SDC

On Monday, 2 March 2015 at 21:54:05 UTC, Brian Schott wrote:
> On Monday, 2 March 2015 at 21:50:46 UTC, Jamie wrote:
>> Hello all!
>>
>> This is my first post on the forums. I'm interested in possibly creating a refactoring tool for D for my MSc dissertation (I notice there is currently no refactoring in D?). I wanted to ask if this is possible with D's current state?
>>
>> More specifically:
>> - Can I easily access things such as the AST?
>
> This should save you a lot of time: https://github.com/Hackerpilot/libdparse

I've had a look around and it seems promising, however are there any usage examples poking around somewhere I could look at? Also, does the produced AST have location information?

On 2015-03-02 16:50, Jamie wrote:
> Hello all!
>
> This is my first post on the forums. I'm interested in possibly creating
> a refactoring tool for D for my MSc dissertation (I notice there is
> currently no refactoring in D?). I wanted to ask if this is possible
> with D's current state?
>
> More specifically:
> - Can I easily access things such as the AST?

If you can write C#, it would be interesting to add it as a feature in Mono-D

https://github.com/aBothe/Mono-D/

It's an IDE engine, there is also a parser (written in C#) called D_Parser as a submodule. I use mono-d all the time to work on my libraries. Currently the refactoring feature in monodevelop is pretty much useless because nobody implemented it I guess.

On Tuesday, 3 March 2015 at 01:17:33 UTC, Jamie wrote:
> On Monday, 2 March 2015 at 21:54:05 UTC, Brian Schott wrote:
>> On Monday, 2 March 2015 at 21:50:46 UTC, Jamie wrote:
>>> Hello all!
>>>
>>> This is my first post on the forums. I'm interested in possibly creating a refactoring tool for D for my MSc dissertation (I notice there is currently no refactoring in D?). I wanted to ask if this is possible with D's current state?
>>>
>>> More specifically:
>>> - Can I easily access things such as the AST?
>>
>> This should save you a lot of time: https://github.com/Hackerpilot/libdparse
>
> I've had a look around and it seems promising, however are there any usage examples poking around somewhere I could look at?

https://github.com/Hackerpilot/Dscanner uses it. Walking the AST is done with the visitor pattern, so if you're familiar with that it should make sense.

On Monday, 2 March 2015 at 21:50:46 UTC, Jamie wrote:
> Hello all!
>
> This is my first post on the forums. I'm interested in possibly creating a refactoring tool for D for my MSc dissertation (I notice there is currently no refactoring in D?). I wanted to ask if this is possible with D's current state?
>
> More specifically:
> - Can I easily access things such as the AST?

I have planned to do refactoring tools myself for D for use in Deadcode (an editor). I'm currently using libdparse myself for other things, but the overview given for SDC last dconf looked very promising.

I would be very interested in following what you do and be an early adopter if possible.

/Jonas

On Tuesday, 3 March 2015 at 01:17:33 UTC, Jamie wrote:
> On Monday, 2 March 2015 at 21:54:05 UTC, Brian Schott wrote:
>> On Monday, 2 March 2015 at 21:50:46 UTC, Jamie wrote:
>>> Hello all!
>>>
>>> This is my first post on the forums. I'm interested in possibly creating a refactoring tool for D for my MSc dissertation (I notice there is currently no refactoring in D?). I wanted to ask if this is possible with D's current state?
>>>
>>> More specifically:
>>> - Can I easily access things such as the AST?
>>
>> This should save you a lot of time: https://github.com/Hackerpilot/libdparse
>
> I've had a look around and it seems promising, however are there any usage examples poking around somewhere I could look at? Also, does the produced AST have location information?

Not all AST nodes have location information right now. I've mostly been adding that as I need it for other projects. Any field of an AST class that has a type "Token" will have line, column and byte offsets.

These projects use libdparse:

https://github.com/Hackerpilot/DCD
https://github.com/Hackerpilot/Dscanner
https://github.com/Hackerpilot/dfmt
https://github.com/economicmodeling/harbored