RubyNode - Like ‘.inspect’ but for code instead of data

Post by Peter Cooper

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RubyNode is an interesting Ruby library that spits out semantic representations of code much in the same way the inspect method does with data. Here’s a demo:

>> def plus_1(x)
>>   x + 1
>> end
=> nil
>> pp method(:plus_1).body_node.transform
[:scope,
 {:next=>
   [:block,
    [[:args, {:rest=>-1, :cnt=>1, :opt=>false}],
     [:call,
      {:args=>[:array, [[:lit, {:lit=>1}]]],
       :mid=>:+,
       :recv=>[:lvar, {:vid=>:x, :cnt=>2}]}]]],
  :rval=>[:cref, {:next=>false, :clss=>Object}],
  :tbl=>[:x]}]

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 18th, 2006 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Cool, Elsewhere, Miscellaneous, Ruby Tricks. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “RubyNode - Like ‘.inspect’ but for code instead of data”

1. #1
   

   
   Matt Mower Says:
   June 19th, 2006 at 3:01 pm

   Any idea how this compares with Ryan Davis & Eric Hodel’s work with ParseTree?

2. #2
   

   
   Peter Cooper Says:
   June 20th, 2006 at 11:54 am

   Unfortunately, no, as I haven’t looked at that yet. Thanks for the reference though!

3. #3
   

   
   Gene Says:
   June 30th, 2006 at 1:08 pm

   more node info
   http://rubystuff.org/nodewrap/

   http://sean-carley.blogspot.com/2006/04/assignment-in-ruby-simple-scoped.html

   http://www.namikilab.tuat.ac.jp/~sasada/prog/rubynodes/nodes.html

4. #4
   

   
   zimbatm Says:
   July 6th, 2006 at 3:03 pm

   @Matt : With ParseTree, I was not able to parse a whole source file. I can only pass existing classes, modules or methods to it.

   On the other side, RubyNode doesn’t seem to have a Sexp processor included like ParseTree.

5. #5
   

   
   zenspider Says:
   August 1st, 2006 at 8:02 pm

   @zimbatm: the latest version of ParseTree will be able to parse whole files. We’re releasing that in a couple of days.

   Not having a sexp processor architecture is a biggie, IMO. We consider SexpProcessor to be the strongest feature in ParseTree. Not having a processing framework is probably not quite as bad as not having comprehensive tests.

   @gene: you should point out that Sean’s article is on ParseTree, not nodewrap.