A C++ refactoring browser and method extraction

Abstract

This paper presents a refactoring tool for C++. Its implementation illustrates the main difficulties of automated refactoring raising in this case from the preprocessor and from the complexity of the language. Our solution, using a back-mapping preprocessor, works in the presence of complex preprocessor constructions built upon file inclusions, macro expansions and conditional compilations. Refactorings are computed after full preprocessing and parsing of target programs, hence, they are based on the same level of program understanding as performed by compilers. The paper illustrates the main ideas of our approach on the example of Extract Method refactoring. © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.