STRUCTURED SEARCH IN SOURCE CODE

• US 20100169871A1
• Filed: 12/30/2008
• Published: 07/01/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Villadsen, Peter
• Granted Patent: US 8,312,437 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/144
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/75 Structural analysis for program understanding

Abstract

Architecture allows a programmer to answer questions about the source code the programmer is authoring, questions that cannot be answered by other means. A searching mechanism is provided over a much more structured presentation of the source code. The architecture utilizes components that provide an intimate knowledge about the structure of the text, namely, the source code of some particular programming language. The search mechanism employs an abstract syntax tree representation of the code over which the search is conducted. The program source code (as edited by the programmer) is transformed into the abstract syntax tree to embody the structure of the program. If the syntax tree is provided in XML, for example, an XML search mechanism such as Xpath can be utilized to perform the actual searching. This tree is then queried, allowing richer searching criteria to be expressed (by virtue of the structured format of the tree).

Claims

1. A computer-implemented search system, comprising:

a conversion component for representing a grammar of a program code as an abstraction; and

a search component for searching the abstraction based on a code-related query to obtain code results.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the abstraction is an abstract syntax tree.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the abstract syntax tree is represented in XML.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the search component processes the query over the abstract syntax tree according to an XML query language.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the query is in a form of an expression.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the query expression is in a form of a grammatical unit the processing of which initiates the search for program code statements.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the abstraction is stored in a cache and the search component performs the search on the abstraction in the cache.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the query is in a form of a natural language expression.

9. A computer-implemented search system, comprising:

a conversion component for representing a syntax of a program code as an abstract syntax tree; and

a search component for searching the abstract syntax tree based on a code-based query.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the abstract syntax tree is represented in XML, and the search component processes the query over the abstract syntax tree according to an XML query language.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the query is in a form of an expression that is a grammatical unit, a processing of which initiates the search for program code statements.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the abstract syntax tree is stored in a cache and the search component performs the search on the abstract syntax tree in the cache.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the query is in a form of a natural language expression.

14. A computer-implemented method of searching code, comprising:

representing a grammar of a program code as an abstraction;

searching the abstraction based on a code-related query; and

presenting code results.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the abstraction is an abstract syntax tree.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising representing the abstraction in XML.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising searching the XML abstraction representation using an Xpath language.

18. The method of claim 14, further comprising composing the query as an expression structured as a grammatical unit.

19. The method of claim 14, further comprising mapping a relationship between the abstraction and the program code.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising presenting a portion of the abstraction associated with a section of the program code in which the code results are found.