An XML-based lightweight C++ fact extractor

Abstract

A lightweight fact extractor is presented that utilizes XML tools, such as XPath and XSLT to extract static information from C++ source code programs. The source code is first converted into an XML representation, srcML, to facilitate the use of a wide variety of XML tools. The method is deemed lightweight because only a partial parsing of the source is done. Additionally, the technique is quite robust and can be applied to incomplete and noncompilable source code. The trade off to this approach is that queries on some low level details cannot be directly addressed. This approach is applied to a fact extractor benchmark as comparison with other, heavier weight, fact extractors. Fact extractors are widely used to support understanding tasks associated with maintenance, reverse engineering and various other software engineering tasks.