Journal of Computer Languages最新文献

{"title":"MoTion: A new declarative object matching approach in Pharo","authors":"Aless Hosry ,&nbsp;Vincent Aranega ,&nbsp;Nicolas Anquetil","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101290","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101290","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Pattern matching is an expressive way of matching data and extracting pieces of information from it. The recent inclusion of pattern matching in the Java and Python languages highlights that such a facility is more and more adopted by developers for everyday development. Other main stream programming languages also offer pattern matching capabilities as part of the language (Rust, Scala, Haskell, and OCaml), with different degrees of expressivity in what can be matched. In the meantime, in graphs, pattern matching takes a slightly different turn; it enhances the expressivity of the patterns that can be defined. Smalltalk currently offers little pattern matching capability to find specific objects inside a large graph of objects using a declarative pattern. In Pharo, the closest library to classical pattern matching that exists is the <span>RBParseTreeSearcher</span>, which allows to express specialized patterns over a Pharo Abstract Syntax Tree to find some inner node. The question arises of what features a flexible pattern matching language should have. In this paper, we review the features found in different existing pattern matching languages, both in General Purpose Languages (like Java) and in declarative graph pattern matching languages. We then describe MoTion, a new pattern matching engine for Pharo smalltalk, combining all these features. We discuss some aspects of MoTion’s implementation and illustrate its use with real case examples.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 101290"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142129955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An efficient instance selection algorithm for fast training of support vector machine for cross-project software defect prediction pairs","authors":"Manpreet Singh,&nbsp;Jitender Kumar Chhabra","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101301","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101301","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>SVM is limited in its use for cross-project software defect prediction because of its very slow training process. So, this research article proposes a new instance selection (IS) algorithm called boundary detection among classes (BDAC) to reduce the training dataset size for faster training of SVM without degrading the prediction performance. The proposed algorithm is evaluated against six existing IS algorithms based on accuracy, running time, data reduction rate, etc. using 23 general datasets, 18 software defect prediction datasets, and two shape-based datasets, and results prove that BDAC is better than the selected algorithm based on collective comparison.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 101301"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142533922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Detection and treatment of string events in the limit","authors":"Alex Holmquist ,&nbsp;Vitor Emanuel ,&nbsp;Fernando C. Alves ,&nbsp;Fernando Magno Quintão Pereira","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101299","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101299","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A string event is a pattern that occurs in a stream of characters. The need to detect and handle string events in infinite texts emerges in many scenarios, including online treatment of logs, web crawling, and syntax highlighting. This paper describes a technique to specify and treat string events. Users determine patterns of interest via a markup language. From such examples, tokens are generalized via a semi-lattice of regular expressions. Such tokens are combined into a context-free language that recognizes patterns in the text stream. These techniques are implemented in a text processing system called <span>Lushu</span>, which runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). <span>Lushu</span> intercepts strings emitted by the JVM. Once patterns are detected, it invokes a user-specified action handler. As a proof of concept, this paper shows that <span>Lushu</span> outperforms state-of-the-art parsers and parser generators, such as <span>Comby</span>, <span>BeautifulSoup4</span> and <span>ZheFuscator</span>, in terms of memory consumption and running time.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 101299"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142533921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A new architecture reconciling refactorings and transformations","authors":"Balša Šarenac ,&nbsp;Nicolas Anquetil ,&nbsp;Stéphane Ducasse ,&nbsp;Pablo Tesone","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cola.2024.101273","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><em>Refactorings</em> are behavior-preserving code transformations. They are a recommended software development practice and are now a standard feature in modern IDEs. There are however many situations where developers need to perform mere <em>transformations</em> (non-behavior-preserving) or to mix refactorings and transformations. Little work exists on the analysis of transformations <em>implementation</em>, how refactorings could be composed of smaller, reusable, parts (simple transformations or other refactorings), and, conversely, how transformations could be <em>reused</em> in isolation or to compose new refactorings. In a previous article, we started to analyze the seminal implementation of refactorings as proposed in the Ph.D. of D. Roberts, and whose evolution is available in the Pharo IDE. We identified a dichotomy between the class hierarchy of <em>refactorings</em> (56 classes) and that of <em>transformations</em> (70 classes). We also noted that there are different kinds of preconditions for different purposes (applicability preconditions or behavior-preserving preconditions). In this article, we go further by proposing a new architecture that: (i) supports two important scenarios (interactive use or scripting, <em><em>i.e.,</em></em> batch use); (ii) defines a clear API unifying refactorings and transformations; (iii) expresses refactorings as decorators over transformations, and; (iv) formalizes the uses of the different kinds of preconditions, thus supporting better user feedback. We are in the process of migrating the existing Pharo refactorings to this new architecture. Current results show that elementary transformations such as the <span>Add Method</span> transformation is reused in 24 refactorings and 11 other transformations; and the <span>Remove Method</span> transformation is reused in 11 refactorings and 7 other transformations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101273"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141312955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Time-traveling object-centric breakpoints","authors":"Valentin Bourcier ,&nbsp;Steven Costiou ,&nbsp;Maximilian Ignacio Willembrinck Santander ,&nbsp;Adrien Vanègue ,&nbsp;Anne Etien","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cola.2024.101285","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Object-centric breakpoints aim to facilitate the debugging of object-oriented programs by focusing on specific objects. However, their practical application faces limitations. They often produce false positives and require developers to identify objects to debug in a running program, which is sometimes not possible due to non-determinism. Additionally, object-centric breakpoints are difficult to build because, to the best of our knowledge, their implementations have never been abstracted from low-level concerns. The literature describes complex reflective architectures necessary for implementing these breakpoints, and their rare available implementations are language-specific.</p><p>In this paper, we introduce <em>Time-Traveling Object-Centric Breakpoints (TTOCBs)</em>, a new definition and implementation of object-centric breakpoints based on <em>Time-Traveling Queries (TTQs)</em>. TTQs are an extensible time-traveling debugging system that allows developers to explore their program executions back and forth by executing debugging queries. We argue that our query-based implementation helps to overcome the limitations of traditional object-centric breakpoints. We describe how TTOCBs assist developers in searching for objects to debug within their program executions, even in the presence of non-determinism. We illustrate how existing object-centric breakpoints from the literature can be implemented and how new ones can be created in a few steps using the TTQ abstractions and scripting API. To build breakpoints, developers need to familiarize themselves with a short API instead of learning language reflection techniques and libraries. This makes our TTOCBs independent of the underlying TTQs and debugger implementations.</p><p>To evaluate our solution, we conducted an initial anecdotal user study on four example scenarios, providing evidence that debugging with TTOCBs requires fewer actions than with traditional object-centric breakpoints. We then discuss the comparison between object-centric breakpoints and TTOCBs in terms of applicability and performance.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101285"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141543639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"PhaDOP: A Pharo framework for implementing software product lines using Delta-Oriented Programming and model-based engineering","authors":"Boubou Thiam Niang ,&nbsp;Giacomo Kahn ,&nbsp;Yacine Ouzrout ,&nbsp;Mustapha Derras ,&nbsp;Jannik Laval","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101283","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101283","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Delta-Oriented Programming is a modular, and flexible paradigm for implementing a Software Product Line. Delta-Oriented Programming involves implementing a core software product alongside a collection of Delta Modules, which encapsulate modifications that can be applied to the core software to obtain the desired product. The applicable Delta modules are activated through product configuration. The core product in Delta-Oriented Programming is mainly an object-oriented program. While Delta-Oriented Programming has the potential to enhance productivity by reusing modifications, its limited availability of tools poses a challenge in managing large-scale software systems, making it difficult for non-experts to use. Model-based engineering offers a viable solution to this problem by utilizing model artifacts instead of code snippets, simplifying product line management based on Delta-Oriented Programming. This paper presents PhaDOP, a framework for implementing Delta-Oriented Programming at the model level in the Pharo environment. The framework provides the necessary structures to construct Software Product Line architecture, organize reusable artifacts, and prepare the Delta Module through a graphical user interface. PhaDOP was evaluated through a case study.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101283"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141401136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fault localization by abstract interpretation and its applications","authors":"Aleksandar S. Dimovski","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101288","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101288","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><em>Fault localization</em> aims to automatically identify the cause of an error in a program by localizing the error to a relatively small part of the program. In this paper, we present a novel technique for automated fault localization via <em>error invariants</em> inferred by abstract interpretation. An error invariant for a location in an error program over-approximates the reachable states at the given location that may produce the error, if the execution of the program is continued from that location. Error invariants can be used for <em>statement-wise semantic slicing</em> of error programs and for obtaining concise error explanations. We use an iterative refinement sequence of backward–forward static analyses by abstract interpretation to compute error invariants, which are designed to explain why an error program violates a particular assertion.</p><p>Furthermore, we present a practical application of the fault localization technique for automatic repair of programs. Given an erroneous program, we first use the fault localization to automatically identify statements relevant for the error, and then repeatedly mutate the expressions in those relevant statements until a correct program that satisfies all assertions is found. All other statements classified by the fault localization as irrelevant for the error are not mutated in the program repair process. This way, we significantly reduce the search space of mutated programs without losing any potentially correct program, and so locate a repaired program much faster than a program repair without fault localization.</p><p>We have developed a prototype tool for automatic fault localization and repair of C programs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach to localize errors in realistic C programs, and to subsequently repair them. Moreover, we show that our approach based on combining fault localization and code mutations is significantly faster that the previous program repair approach without fault localization.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101288"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141845094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Screening articles for systematic reviews with ChatGPT","authors":"Eugene Syriani ,&nbsp;Istvan David ,&nbsp;Gauransh Kumar","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cola.2024.101287","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Systematic reviews (SRs) provide valuable evidence for guiding new research directions. However, the manual effort involved in selecting articles for inclusion in an SR is error-prone and time-consuming. While screening articles has traditionally been considered challenging to automate, the advent of large language models offers new possibilities. In this paper, we discuss the effect of using ChatGPT on the SR process. In particular, we investigate the effectiveness of different prompt strategies for automating the article screening process using five real SR datasets. Our results show that ChatGPT can reach up to 82% accuracy. The best performing prompts specify exclusion criteria and avoid negative shots. However, prompts should be adapted to different corpus characteristics.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101287"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590118424000303/pdfft?md5=88fb1aa235050a4011046d39a856044b&pid=1-s2.0-S2590118424000303-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141606804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pharo: A reflective language—Analyzing the reflective API and its internal dependencies","authors":"Iona Thomas,&nbsp;Stéphane Ducasse,&nbsp;Pablo Tesone,&nbsp;Guillermo Polito","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101274","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101274","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Reflective operations are powerful APIs (Application Programming Interface) that let developers build advanced tools and architectures. Reflective operations are used for implementing tools and development environments (<em>e.g.,</em> compilers, debuggers, inspectors) or language features (<em>e.g.,</em> distributed systems, exceptions, proxies, aspect-oriented programming). In addition, languages are evolving, introducing better concepts, and revising practices and APIs. Since 2008 Pharo has evolved from Squeak and its reflective API has evolved accordingly, diverging consequently from the original Smalltalk reflective API. With more than 500 reflective methods identified, Pharo has one of the largest reflective feature sets ranging from structural reflection to on-demand stack reification. Those operations are often built on top of the other, creating different layers of reflective operations, from low-level to high-level ones.</p><p>There is a need to understand the current reflective APIs to understand their underlying use, potential dependencies, and whether some reflective features can be scoped and optional. Such an analysis is challenged by new metaobjects organically introduced in the system, such as first-class instance variables, and their mixture with the base-level API of objects and classes.</p><p>In this article, we analyze the reflective operations used in Pharo 12 and their interdependencies. We propose a classification based on their semantics and we identify a set of issues of the current implementation. Such an analysis of reflective operations in Pharo is important to support the revision of the reflective layer and its potential redesign.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101274"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141130163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Towards a Dynabook for verified VM construction","authors":"Boris Shingarov ,&nbsp;Jan Vraný","doi":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101275","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cola.2024.101275","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We present <em>Smalltalk-25</em>, a scientific <em>Programm</em> of research towards the synthesis of Smalltalk VMs by formal methods. We approach this through a Dynabook-style implementation of Hilbert’s “manipulating proofs as mathematical objects”. We begin by implementing an automated-reasoning engine based on refinement types. Having that foundation laid, we build a program logics for a simple “model” language; a framework for reasoning about a real intermediate language by translating into the model language; an ahead-of-time bootstrapper; and a framework for debugging thus-constructed VMs.</p><p>Our <em>Programm</em> is an ongoing research effort; this paper provides a report of its current status. Every part of our system is implemented in Smalltalk and available from GitHub under the MIT license.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48552,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer Languages","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 101275"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141140750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}