DocumentCode :
3450542
Title :
Syntactic approximation using iterative lexical analysis
Author :
Cox, Anthony ; Clarke, Charles
Author_Institution :
Fac. of Comput. Sci., Dalhousie Univ., Halifax, NS, Canada
fYear :
2003
fDate :
10-11 May 2003
Firstpage :
154
Lastpage :
163
Abstract :
Syntactic irregularities, which often occur in source-code undergoing maintenance, prevent the application of analysis and comprehension tools that employ traditional parsing techniques. As an alternative to parsing, we have developed an iterative lexical technique that is based on the repetitive application of regular expressions using a shortest-match strategy. The approach recognizes syntactic elements using iterative refinement, where unambiguous constructs are identified to provide contextual cues for the identification of more ambiguous constructs. The use of a shortest-match strategy supports the bottom up construction of a syntax tree by identifying smaller subtrees first. To examine the technique´s effectiveness, we present the results of an experiment comparing iterative lexical analysis against parsing. The measures of precision and recall are used to evaluate and compare the two approaches.
Keywords :
computational linguistics; program diagnostics; reverse engineering; software maintenance; software prototyping; software tools; tree data structures; bottom up construction; iterative lexical analysis; iterative refinement; precision; recall; regular expressions; repetitive application; shortest-match strategy; software maintenance; source-code; subtrees; syntactic approximation; syntactic irregularities; Application software; Buildings; Computer languages; Computer science; Data analysis; Data mining; Failure analysis; Information analysis; Iterative methods; Natural languages;
fLanguage :
English
Publisher :
ieee
Conference_Titel :
Program Comprehension, 2003. 11th IEEE International Workshop on
ISSN :
1092-8138
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-1883-4
Type :
conf
DOI :
10.1109/WPC.2003.1199199
Filename :
1199199
Link To Document :
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