When writing source code, in many IDEs and editors you can
jump to the method declaration
jump to the class declaration
etc.
Is there any keyword or technical term which describes this feature?
Code Navigation is the term is was looking for.
Related
I need to extract some info from a list of mainframe scripts written in focus language.
I'm trying to write a java program for parsing source code. Due to the name of the language it is difficult to find any useful information on the internet. Maybe someone know if exist a grammar for this language on internet(for example for antlr4) or maybe an implemented lexer.
Thanks in advance for any response!
Follow this link to the Focus Developer Manuals, then click on the left side to open the list of manuals available.
Note: The link to "FOCUS Developer Manuals" at the bottom of the the WikiPedia page was http://... instead of https://..., and resulted in a connection refused error. I have corrected the Wiki page.
There is a curated list of ANTLR grammars here. Unfortunately, there is no grammar for the focus product.
Not all authors make their grammars available at the above link, you might try searching github and other code repositories.
I'm a C and C++ programmer trying to get started with Objective-C. I'm really bewildered, though, by the apparent total absence of a standards document for the language and standard library. I can understand that there's no ISO standard, but is there no reference document at all? And how is it that nobody seems very concerned about this state of affairs? (Admittedly, it's hard to Google for such a thing, because "reference", "document", and "standard" are all overloaded terms. So it's possible that I've just missed something critical.)
This question gets close to asking the same thing: Where can i find a document explaining how Objective-C is implemented and the only answer provided was "read this source code published by Apple which is pretty close to what their implementation did a few years ago, maybe".
This page: http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ObjectiveCLiterals.html includes a snippet of a formal grammar for Objective-C, but ironically it's in the context of describing a feature that Clang just went off and added on their own and that nobody else supports. There's another grammar here: http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-dev/2001-March/022979.html but it's more than 10 years old.
To narrow the question down to the barest minimum: I'd like to know what methods are guaranteed to be provided by "Object", and what the behavior of each method is. For other languages, this type of information is usually provided by something like this: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/Object.html
Unfortunately there is no Standard for ObjC as there is for C++ or C. Apple being the main user and driver behind the language, their compiler implementation (the ObjC bits of Clang) is the de facto Standard. Their old document (broken link) "The Objective-C Programming Language" was about as close as you got to a prose version, and it was nowhere near the precision of either of those other languages' Standards (and it tends to lag behind the compiler).
It may still be floating around on the web somewhere, but it is no longer up-to-date. "Programming with Objective-C" seems to be their intended replacement (but again, it's nothing like a standard).
Regarding your comment (10k link only) under Tim's deleted answer, the Cocoa root class is NSObject, and its interface is documented, but its source is not available. Note that the NSObject protocol is also an extremely important part of a Cocoa object's functionality. Apple's runtime is open-source,* and has a root class called Object, I assume for purposes of demonstration. It's not used in Cocoa programming.
You already know about all of this, of course. The direct answer to your question is, "there isn't one". Most of the syntax is the same as C, though, as bbum points out: Authoritative description of ObjectiveC string literals? (yes, I copy-pasted my comment from there into the beginning of this answer).
*Note that contrary to what you say in your question, this is the actual, up-to-date, runtime.
I think I understand your question correctly, so I will answer accordingly...
I highly recommend the documents in the Apple Developer Library. Here are a couple basic guides to get you started:
Concepts in Objective-C Programming
Programming with Objective-C
Cocoa Fundamentals Guide
iOS App Programming
The documents there are the definitive source for Objective-C and Cocoa best practices and coding standards. There are many more documents on a multitude of topics, so make sure to check that website out.
You also asked about how to know what methods are available for objects. To know that, you can check out the Class References.
For example:
NSObject Class Reference
The difference between the guides and the class references is that the guides are more about the concepts behind the code whereas the class references are a list of the methods and properties available for a class.
Hope this helped.
Found at least some of the language definitions of Objective-C, including syntax etc. (see link)
I'm just now where you have been 3 years ago (according to the date in your question): I'm starting to get into Objective-C, and I find it as well strange that there seems to be no reference manual, where I could for example look up the exact meaning and definition of syntax, keywords etc.
I've now discovered, that at least some of it can be found in a document which is related to cocoa (Cocoa Core Competencies). The link for example jumps to the definition of the keyword "#property".
In my POV this is not only relevant only specifically to Cocoa but is generally defining the Objective-C language extension of C. Thats why I wouldn't have searched for it in documents labled "Cocoa ".
I come from the ruby and python worlds where we have many libraries that can syntax highlight arbitrary code from many languages. I am looking for something similar in the objc ecosystem, but i can't seem to find such, is there one available?
The equivalent libraries in Ruby would be CodeRay and Pygments for Python,
thanks in advance!
Banister,
I myself have searched for a long time for a nice and robust Cocoa Syntax Highlighter, and since I'm currently building a code-oriented text editor myself, that would be a major part of the project.
So, I found out that there are plenty of Objective-C/Cocoa -friendly Syntax Highlighting libraries/components. For a starter (for something relatively basic, that is), I would suggest you have a look at :
OkudaKit (using CSS for styling)
UKSyntaxColoredTextDocument by Uli Kusterer (pretty nice try)
However, if you really need something POWERFUL, well-tested and still Cocoa-friendly, I would definitely suggest you to try the Scintilla component (for Cocoa). The code is great, and the community (at Scintilla-Interest Group) will gladly help you iron out any issues you may encounter.
In a few words :
I'm currently using on an about-to-be-release big project and it's working beautifully for me.
Scintilla
Scintilla is a free library that provides text-editing functions, with
an emphasis on advanced features for source code editing. SciTE
(cross-platform), Geany, Notepad++ (Windows), and Notepad2 (Windows)
are examples of standalone editors based on Scintilla.
Scintilla Editing Component in use (SciTe)
Features
Scintilla supports many features to make code editing easier in
addition to syntax highlighting. The highlighting method allows the
use of different fonts, colors, styles and background colors, and is
not limited to fixed-width fonts. The control supports error
indicators, line numbering in the margin, as well as line markers such
as code breakpoints. Other features such as code folding and
autocompletion can be added.
Download Scintilla (the Cocoa support has been integrated in the main project) : http://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDownload.html
Example project (integrating Scintilla with Cocoa) :
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mike-lischke/scintilla-cocoa/trunk/files/head:/cocoa/ScintillaTest/
For complete documentation, have a look at : Scintilla
Documentation
Fragaria may be useful for future reference.
I'd like to create an IDE for a language and I'm wondering how to implement some features. In particular syntax highlighting and content assist are troubling as they must work even when editor content is not valid (when user is typing syntax hightlight should not disappear just because parser fails).
I am wondering how to approach this problem (and others as well). I've found this: How does code completion work? with a description of a solution to this problem, but it's rather brief.
I can come up with a way to implement all features I want at some point, but I'm not the first one and someone has done it already ;) (and reading source code of Eclipse is not that easy)
So, my real question is there a book discussing problems related with creating IDE? A detailed article discussing how to parse invalid code? Any source of information I should see?
Ah, and by IDE I don't mean a new application, just a set of plugins for eclipse.
The following link will help you further..
Syntax Highlighting:Fast Colored TextBox for Syntax Highlighting
an OpenSource IDE:SharpDevelop
an eBook How to create IDE:[Dissecting a C# Application: Inside SharpDevelop]
I have to maintain a portion of Access 2003 VBA code, which is not my primary programming language, and while I'm pretty solid on doing regular stuff, I would still like to have a pure spec of the language syntax.. It just saves a lot of time compared to reading tons of stupid tutorials that tell me what a for loop is.
Is there any resource on the VBA syntax ? I would be happy to have it as formal as possible, probably something like BNF. I couldnt find an official spec on it.
Check out VBA Language Specification (PDF) on MSDN.
The Official reference is Microsoft docs