XTRAN User's Manual

Chapter 2 ("mini" for demo)

(This chapter revised June 30, 2004)

Conventions

Throughout this manual, in discussing XTRAN, LLC's XTRAN expert system, we use the following conventions in discussing the various flavors of languages with which XTRAN works:

We refer to the input language to be processed as "source language" or "source code".

We refer to the target code you specify to be generated (in XTRAN rules) as "prototype target code".

We refer to XTRAN's interpretive rules language that guides code manipulation as "meta-code"; it consists of meta-statements, meta-expressions, meta-functions, meta-variables, and meta-comments. For translation, it normally includes prototype target code to be generated.

Meta-code may be evaluated at any point in XTRAN's operation, whether the activity be code analysis, code re-engineering, code translation, or code generation.

We refer to the code XTRAN generates through translation as "generated target code".

We also use the following syntax conventions:

Angle brackets mean user-supplied. Example:

 ;@COMCOL=<n>

Double curly braces and vertical bars mean a required set of alternatives; choose one. Example:

    {{<alt1>|<alt2>|<alt3>}}

Double square brackets mean optional; with vertical bars they mean an optional set of alternatives. Examples:

;@DECL[[=<lang>]]

     [[<alt1>|<alt2>]]