From: Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@...>
Date: 2001-11-16T19:33:08+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:25405] Re: Topic ideas for an upcoming series of articles featuring Ruby?

On Fri, 16 Nov 2001, Colin Steele wrote:

> series have particular appeal for programmers -- after all, they are
> the users of Ruby.

On the basis of Ruby making it worth attempting things you wouldn't
otherwise, what about:  read a makefile, and collect the source files
together.  For each source file, produce an HTML listing of the file,
with links in so that choosing a variable will take you back to its
definition.

I don't think it would have to be a perfect parser of C (or whatever) to
be useful.

A first shot would be to provide links back to #define'd things from the
respective macros. Later possible refinements: link system calls to man
pages, highlight/colourise undefined symbols

Features this would use:
	string handling, regexps
	HTML generation code (CGI library)
        access to file system
        Data structures for holding symbol table(s)

I did something simpler, but like this for Ruby itself with my
Rdescriber program.

	Hugh.