AST from C code [closed]

Answer 1

See pycparser - a pure-Python AST generator for C.

Answer 2

"I tried ELSA but it is not getting compiled. (I am using Ubuntu 8.4)"

The Elkhound and Elsa source code, version 2005.08.22b from scottmcpeak.com/elkhound/ is outdated (old C++ style .h header files).

Elsa is working and part of Oink: http://www.cubewano.org/oink/#Gettingthecode I have just got it working now under Ubuntu 9.10.

Answer 3

There are two projects that I'm aware of and that you could find useful:

• CIL
• Transformers

They both parse a standard C source code to allow further analisys and transformation. I've not used them so you have to check for yourself if they fit your needs.

The suggestion of using GCC is also valid, of course. I know there's not much documentation on this aspect of gcc, though.

Answer 4

www.antlr.org

Answer 5

How about taking gcc and writing a custom backend for it? I've never done it nor even worked on gcc source code, so I don't know how hard it would be.

Answer 6

I would recommend clang. It has a fairly complete C implementation with most gcc extensions, and the code is very understandable. Their C++ implementation is incomplete, but if you only care about generating ASTs from C code that should be fine. Depending on what you want to do you can either use clang as a library and work with the ASTs directly, or have clang dump them out to console.