[cfe-dev] Cleaning up the representation of Decls in the AST

[steve naroff]

On Sep 11, 2008, at 1:51 PM, Ted Kremenek wrote:

> From my perspective, Decls just represent syntax, and if our current
> ASTs cannot adequately capture such elements of the syntax then they
> need to be augmented.
>

Hey Ted,

I'm trying to catch up and understand this thread (since there still  
seems to be some disagreement on what's best).

That said, I'm not sure I understand your point that "Decls just  
represent syntax". Since your argument seems to revolve around it, I  
need some clarification.

 From my perspective, Decls don't just represent syntax. For example,  
VarDecl has a method "getInit()" which returns an expression. The  
initializer is an important part of the semantics of the program.  
There are many other examples...

My point is the Decl AST's contain lots of semantics and weren't  
designed to capture all syntactic elements. There is a ton of  
punctuation ('(', ',', ';', '*')) which is "lost".

Since I know you understand all this, I must be missing something  
critical to your thinking...

snaroff