VAMP: A tool for literate programming independent of programming language and formatter

Abstract

The authors have developed a module extractor called VAMP, that cooperates with a standard formatter. They describe the VAMP approach to literate programming. Literate programming identifies a method of documentation which explains to people what a computer is supposed to do. Generally, this means that refinement steps are documented in such a way that modules can be extracted from the documentation files. The tool has been in use since 1982. The experiences are predominantly positive, in spite of the overhead implicit in the methodology. The fact that VAMP is independent of both programming language and formatter distinguishes it from WEB and its derivatives.<>