Is there a good Python library that can parse C++? [closed]

Answer 1

The Clang project provides libraries for just parsing C++ code.

Either with Clang and GCC you can generate an XML representation of the code

If you prefer a more Pythonian solution you could also search for a C++ yacc grammar and use py-ply (Yacc for Python), but that seems the solution that needs more work

Answer 2

The pyparsing wiki shows this example - all it does is parse struct declarations, so this might give you just a glimpse at the magnitude of the problem.

I suggest you (or even better, your employer) shell out $200 and buy Enterprise Architect from sparxsystems. This software is amazingly powerful for the price, and includes pretty good code reverse engineering features. You will spend far more than this in your own time to only get about 2% of the job done. In this case, "buys" wins over "make".

Answer 3

For many years I've been using pygccxml, which is a very nice Python wrapper around GCC-XML. It's a very full featured package that forms the basis of some well used code-generation tools out there such as py++ which is from the same author.

Answer 4

I would keep an eye on the gcc.gnu.org/wiki/plugins as it seems like plugins are the way to go. Also the gcc-python-plugin seems like it has a nice implementation.

Answer 5

You won't find a drop-in Python library to do this. Parsing C++ is fiddly, and few parsers have been written that aren't part of a compiler. You can find a good summary of the issues here.

The best bet might be clang, as its C++ support is well-established. Though this is not a Python solution, it sounds as though it would be amenable to re-use within a Python wrapper, given the emphasis on encapsulation and good design in its development.

Answer 6

Pycparser is a complete and functional parser for ANSI C. Perhaps you can extend it to c++ :-)