Semantic APIs for programming languages

The evolution of approaches to the design of advanced language oriented tools for non-compilation manipulations on programs is discussed. The notion of semantic representation (SR) as the basis of such tools is introduced. SR is considered as a composition of information structures together with corresponding functionality which holds the comprehensive knowledge about the program semantics. The major components of the semantic representation of C++ programs (project SemantiC++) are considered and discussed. The most important and novel features of the SemantiC++ representation are the support for SR generation incorporated into the SR and the semantic search feature which enables powerful and sophisticated semantic queries to the SR in an easy and elegant way.