Software Engineering for Smart Data Analytics & Smart Data Analytics for Software Engineering
Represents a comment.
#id: id
the unique ID assigned to this comment.
#parent: id
the ID of the fact that represents the element this comment is referring to. The parent element is
determined based on a set of Parent Identification Heuristics.
#type: atom
One of these atoms:
javaDoc
: Indicates that this comment is a JavaDoc comment/** * This is a JavaDoc comment. */
block
: Indicates that this comment is a block comment /* * This is a block comment. */
line
: Indicates that this comment is a line comment // This is a line comment. // This is another one. Both refer to the next line of code. anobject.aMessage();
Because comments are abundant and often very long, two “optimisations” are performed:
commentT/3 fact if they can be identified with a single contiguous text block that is not interrupted by statements
or declarations. See the parent identification heuristics below. - commentT/3 facts do not include the comment text. Instead, for each commentT fact there is a [[slT|slT]] (sl = Source Location) fact with the same id. It represents the text range of the comment in the source code. slT/3 facts let you extract the comment text from the original source code, when needed.
In order to decide to which declaration or statement a comment refers, JTransformer uses a set of heuristics derived from common best practice:
For examples, see the comments in the sample Java source below.
/** * This is a JavaDoc comment whose parent is the hello() method. */ public void hello(){ /* * This is a block comment whose parent is the variable declaration. */ int variable; // These two line comments will be grouped together into a single // commentT fact whose parent is the following declaration: int var2 = hello2(); // This one and the one below will also be grouped // and will also refer to the declaration of var2 }
In the following, commentT facts are nested below the AST elements to which they refer. This is just for readability and has no semantic implications:
methodT(#method, #class, 'hello', [], type(basic, void, 0), [], #block). commentT(#comment1, #method, 'javaDoc'). // The JavaDoc comment associated to the method declaration modifierT(#method, 'public'). blockT(#block, #method, #method, [#localdvar, V5]). localT(#localvar, #block, #method, type(basic, int, 0), 'variable', 'null'). commentT(#comment2, #localvar, 'blockComment'). // The block comment associated to the declaration of 'variable' localT(#localvar2, #block, #method, type(basic, int, 0), 'var2', #call). commentT(#comment3, #localvar2, 'lineComment'). // The first two line comments grouped together in a single commentT fact commentT(#comment4, #localvar2, 'lineComment'). // The last two line comments grouped together in a single commentT fact callT(#call, #parent, #method, 'null', 'hello2', [], V7).
ast_node_def('Java',commentT,[ ast_arg(id, mult(1,1,no ), id, [commentT]), ast_arg(parent, mult(1,1,no), id, [id]), ast_arg(kind, mult(1,1,no ), attr, [atom]) ]).