Adding Contracts to C++ with Transformers

From LRDE

The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Abstract

Contract programming is a paradigm that allows developers to ensure that some conditions are satisfied when a function is called (preconditions), or when it returns (postconditions). It makes debugging easier and it is a good way to document what a function accepts as argument or ensures on the result. In oriented-object languages, it is also possible to check a set of conditions on every call and return of any member function of a class (class invariants), and conditions are inherited from parent classes. The Transformers project aims at providing source to source transformations on C and C++ sources. A C extension to support contracts in C has already been written, when C++ parsing wasn't working yet. We will show how to write a C++ grammar extension to bring contracts in the C++ with the Transformers project, and then how to transform this extended C++ into standard C++.