The generator has been designed to be retargetable to different host languages by
separating the implementation in a generic front-end, which produces an abstract
representation of an API, and a host language specific back-end. For each host
language, code templates need to be provided for generating automata, escaping,
and pretty-printing. For the Java and PHP back-ends the templates amount to
420 and 400 lines of code respectively.
To make the implementation of a new back-end as lightweight as possible, the
generator back-ends produces parse trees of the host API, which can be unparsed
to a source API without the need for a pretty printer for the host language. In this
way, only a syntax definition of the host language is required.
separating the implementation in a generic front-end, which produces an abstract
representation of an API, and a host language specific back-end. For each host
language, code templates need to be provided for generating automata, escaping,
and pretty-printing. For the Java and PHP back-ends the templates amount to
420 and 400 lines of code respectively.
To make the implementation of a new back-end as lightweight as possible, the
generator back-ends produces parse trees of the host API, which can be unparsed
to a source API without the need for a pretty printer for the host language. In this
way, only a syntax definition of the host language is required.
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