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Example-Based Program Transformation

  • Conference paper
Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5301))

Abstract

Software changes. During their life cycle, software systems experience a wide spectrum of changes, from minor modifications to major architectural shifts. Small-scale changes are usually performed with text editing and refactorings, while large-scale transformations require dedicated program transformation languages. For medium-scale transformations, both approaches have disadvantages. Manual modifications may require a myriad of similar yet not identical edits, leading to errors and omissions, while program transformation languages have a steep learning curve, and thus only pay off for large-scale transformations.

We present a system supporting example-based program transformation. To define a transformation, a programmer performs an example change manually, feeds it into our system, and generalizes it to other application contexts. With time, a developer can build a palette of reusable medium-sized code transformations. We provide a detailed description of our approach and illustrate it with examples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. REVEAL @ Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Switzerland

    Romain Robbes & Michele Lanza

Authors
  1. Romain Robbes
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  2. Michele Lanza
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Editor information

Krzysztof Czarnecki Ileana Ober Jean-Michel Bruel Axel Uhl Markus Völter

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Robbes, R., Lanza, M. (2008). Example-Based Program Transformation. In: Czarnecki, K., Ober, I., Bruel, JM., Uhl, A., Völter, M. (eds) Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. MODELS 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5301. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87875-9_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87875-9_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-87874-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-87875-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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