Late bound programmatic assistance

• US 8,321,836 B2
• Filed: 06/21/2007
• Issued: 11/27/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Meijer, Henricus Johannes Maria, Silver, Amanda, Vick, Paul A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Vu, Tuan A
• Application Number:
  US11/766,347
• Publication Number:
  US 20080320444A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,986 Days
• Field of Search: 717/107, 717/117, 717/131, 717/140, 717/141, 717/144, 717/113, 719/328, 719/332, 707/200, 715/536, 715/709
• US Class Current: 717/113
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/33 Intelligent editors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/437 Type checking

Abstract

Programmatic assistance is provided for dynamic typing within an integrated development environment (IDE). Types associated with late bound constructs can be inferred from static information and/or determined from design time execution. Assistance can then be provided as a function of a precise and/or speculative type. Furthermore, dynamic type assistance can be employed in conjunction with static type assistance to facilitate development of a program that supports both late and early binding, for example.

Claims

1. An integrated program development system, comprising:

a dynamic type component that identifies one or more candidate types for late bound, dynamically-typed programmatic constructs by approximating the late bound, dynamically-typed programmatic constructs with static information; and

an assistance component that provides programmatic suggestions for the late bound, dynamically-typed programmatic constructs in a code editor as a function of the identified candidate types to facilitate program specification, wherein at least one of the programmatic suggestions identifies a member that matches a candidate type, the member being an operator construct associated with source code representing a class, the operator construct indicative of one or more member types as possible candidates for late bound types resolution, the one or more possible member types being displayed by the assistance component for selection within the integrated program development system.

2. The system of claim 1, the dynamic type component performs static analysis of the program to identify likely types for the late bound constructs.

3. The system of claim 1, the dynamic type component identifies a precise type for a late bound construct via design time execution of the program.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising a static type component that identifies types for early bound programmatic constructs for use by the assistance component.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a filter component that restricts provided suggestions to a predetermined number of most relevant suggestions.

6. The system of claim 5, further comprising a ranking component that ranks the relevancy of each suggestion as a function of the likelihood that an associated type is correct.

7. The system of claim 5, at least one suggestion identifies a member that matches a candidate type.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising an optimization component that persists the candidate types and/or the associated suggestions to optimize execution.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising a refactor component that converts a dynamic type into a static type in accordance with programmer specification.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising an extension component that adds or alters behavior of the dynamic type component and/or assistant component.

11. A method of assisting object-oriented program development, comprising:

determining at least one type for a receiver of a dynamically-typed late bound call at design time by approximating the dynamically-typed late bound call with static information; and

displaying a set of members of the determined dynamic type to a programmer for selection and automatic code completion including automatically completing dynamically-typed late bound calls for the determined dynamic type, wherein one or more programmatic suggestions are provided which identify a member that matches a candidate type, the member being an operator construct associated with source code representing a class, the operator construct indicative of one or more member types as possible candidates for late bound types resolution, the one or more possible member types being displayed for selection by a user at design time during object-oriented program development.

12. The method of claim 11, comprising performing static analysis of code to infer the type.

13. The method of claim 11, comprising identifying the type from design time code execution.

14. The method of claim 11, displaying the members in order of relevancy determined by likelihood that the type is correct.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising indicating members derived from a precise type and/or speculative type.

16. The method of claim 11, further comprising retrieving the at least one type and/or members from a cache.

17. The method of claim 11, further comprising employing an index to identify the type members.

18. The method of claim 11, further comprising replacing a dynamic call with a static call as a function of a selected member.

19. A system to facilitate program specification for a program developed within a code editing environment, comprising:

a processor;

means for determining one or more likely types for dynamically-typed late bound calls at design time by approximating the dynamically-typed late bound calls with static information; and

means for displaying within a code editor members of the determined dynamic type that match the one or more determined types, wherein one or more programmatic suggestions are provided which identify a member that matches a candidate type, the member being an operator construct associated with source code representing a class, the operator construct indicative of one or more member types as possible candidates for late bound types resolution, the one or more possible member types being displayed for selection by a user at design time during program development.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising a means for determining one or more static types.