Re: Line information in AGSParser

[Adrian Robert]

> As I do not know internals of the AGSParser I am trying to write here 
> to ask someone with better knowledge of it. Is it possible to add 
> following additional information in the AGSParser?

I'm not an expert on the class but I've looked through the code before. 
 It does a '[String withContentsOfFile] before starting the parse, so 
parsing from a string in the first place should be easy.  Likewise 
recording the character range information -- the code is hierarchically 
structured, so you could mark the position before and after, e.g., 
calls to -parseInterface or -parseMethodXXX call to get a range.  The 
code already tracks line numbers to an extent.

It shouldn't be too hard, and not invasive or performance-harming to 
its current functionality, to throw the additional range info into the 
dictionary returned by -parseFile.  You could also make it optional.

If changes to serve other functionality ever do interfere with 
AGSParser's role in the documentation system, the thing to do is 
refactor out a pure parser class and then a documentation helper class. 
 But I think this has already been done to a large extent (AGSOutput 
and others are the more doc-related classes) and so is not an issue for 
now..

Adrian


> - character range for some elements, like:
>         - @interface to @end
>         - @implementation to @end
>         - method from '-' to last '}'
>         - method from '+' to last '}'
> - parsing from a string instead of file only
>
> This would allow better source browsing/indexing and in code 
> generation it would allow methods to be replaced. I know that it was 
> intended to be documentation helper class, however it looks like fully 
> functional reusable parser.