Language-enhanced programming tools

• US 7,412,388 B2
• Filed: 12/12/2003
• Issued: 08/12/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/12/2003
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Kalra, Mohit, Dalal, Baiju
• Primary Examiner(s): Knepper; David D
• Application Number:
  US10/734,794
• Publication Number:
  US 20050131672A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,705 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 704/260
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/40 Processing or translation of natural language natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30

Abstract

Statements of a computer program expressed using a first source natural language are made meaningful to a programmer familiar with a second target natural language. The first source natural language of the computer program is determined from the programmer, or through analysis, and the second target natural language desired by the programmer is selected. Textual constructs may be parsed, with reference to stored coding conventions to determine meaningful lexical tokens. Such tokens are translated with a translation engine, and displayed to the programmer, desirably using a graphical user interface feature of an integrated development environment (IDE) for computer programming in a particular programming language.

Claims

1. A method for translating statements from a source natural language to a target natural language, the method comprising the steps of:

a) identifying, by a computer system, textual constructs of source code of a computer program, the textual constructs including words in a source natural language, wherein the words are to be translated to a target natural language and the textual constructs include statements, expressions, comments, variable declarations and function names, the textual constructs being denoted in respective ways corresponding to respective coding style conventions, and wherein the coding style conventions include;

a first convention wherein a function or variable name is denoted in the source code in a way wherein words of the name are joined by a predetermined separator or preceded by a predetermined character, and

a second convention denoting a comment in a way wherein words of the comment are delimited by a pair of predetermined delimiters;

wherein the method further includes the computer system;

b) identifying lexical tokens from the identified textual constructs;

c) translating the identified textual constructs, including the lexical tokens, from the source natural language to the target natural language;

d) reconstructing the translated textual constructs, including the lexical tokens, as translated source code textual constructs;

wherein the method further includes, for debug information generated by a compiler responsive to the compiler compiling executable code from the source code, the steps of;

e) identifying, by the computer system, textual constructs of the debug information corresponding to ones of the textual constructs of the source code identified in a); and

f) translating the identified textual constructs of the debug information, including the lexical tokens, from the source natural language to the target natural language; and

g) displaying the source code and debug information translated textual constructs in the target natural language.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising the step of the computer system analysing the computer program source code to determine the source natural language to be used for the steps of translating the identified source code and debug information textual constructs.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising the step of the computer system receiving input, wherein the input specifies the target natural language.

4. The method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising the step of the computer system catching translated source code and debug information textual constructs for subsequent use.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the identifying of the source code textual constructs by the computer system includes the computer system identifying ones of the source code textual constructs of the computer program responsive to definitions of the source code textual constructs identified automatically by the computer system from source code of the computer program.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the identifying of the source code textual constructs by the computer system includes the computer system identifying ones of the source code textual constructs of the computer program responsive to definitions of the source code textual constructs identified from textual input supplied by a programmer.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising the step of displaying the translated source code and debug information textual constructs in part of a graphical user interface.