Francisco J. Almeida-Martínez

VAST: visualization of abstract syntax trees within language processors courses

In this poster we present VAST, a visualization tool to support teaching language processors. On the one hand, VAST provides an API that allows generating visualizations of abstract syntax trees (AST). This process is independent of the parser generator. On the other hand, VAST provides an advanced interface to animate the AST construction process and to cope with huge ones.

Syntax Trees Visualization in Language Processing Courses

This paper describes the educational tool VAST. We designed VAST to be used in compiler and language processing courses. The current version allows generating and visualizing syntax trees and their construction process. The main advantages of VAST follow: it is designed to be as independent from the parser generator as possible, it allows students to visualize the behaviour of parsers they develop, and it has an interface designed to easily handle huge syntax trees. We describe different ways of using VAST in educational settings as well as a usability evaluation.

Educational visualizations of syntax error recovery

This work is focused on the syntax error recovery visualization within the compilation process. We have observed that none of the existing tools, which display some views of the compilation, give a solution to this aspect. We present an educational tool called VAST which allows to visualize the different views of the compilation process. Besides, VAST allows to display different syntax error recovery strategies.

SRec and VAST: Visualizing Software with a Student-Centered Aim

-61Abstract — This paper reviews software visualization focused on the educational environment. Software visualization is a very wide study field, so we have focused on two areas: recursion visualization and parsers’ visualization. The paper contains a retrospective about what has been made on it, what lacks we have found and the solution provided by the authors: SRec and VAST, two software tools trying to make a significant difference between them and the software made before.

Student-centered design of a parser visualization tool

There exist many visualizations tools which visualize some aspect of the compiling process. They can be separated in two groups. On the one hand there are the ones which have a clear educational aim e.g. JFlap [3]. On the other hand, there are tools which display some aspects of the parsers generated with a particular generation tool e.g. ANTLRworks. The limitations of these tools are that they depend on a particular generation tool and they offer a partial view of the parsing process. In this situation when a student/teacher needs to visualize a different aspect, has to change both, the generation and visualization tool, adapting to the new syntax notation and graphical representations. We have developed VAST [1], an educational tool to display the syntax tree and its construction process within the compiling process. One of the main advantages of VAST is its independence from the parsing technique and the parser generator. We have used VAST with: LL parsers developed with ANTLR and LALR parsers developed with CUP. VAST has passed educational and usability evaluations. Although the results of the last evaluation [2] were positive, we realized that, due to the generic approach of VAST, the user has to perform many intermediate steps until he/she produces the visualizations.

VAST: a visualization-based educational tool for language processors courses

In this demonstration we present VAST, a visualization tool to support teaching language processors. On the one hand, VAST provides an API that allows generating visualizations of syntax trees independently of the parser generator. On the other hand, VAST provides a GUI with multiple views: the source code, the stack and the syntax tree.