Design of a generic parse tree for imperative languages

Abstract

Since programs are written in many languages and design documents are not maintained (if they ever existed), there is a need to extract the design and other information that the programs represent. To do this without writing a separate program for each language, a common representation of the symbol table and parse tree would be required.The purpose of the parse tree and symbol table will not be to generate object code but to provide a platform for analysis tools. In this way the tool designer develops only one version instead of separate versions for each language. The generic symbol table and generic parse tree may not be as detailed as those same structures in a specific compiler but the parse tree must include all structures for imperative languages.