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XREF for Java Classes


Disclaimer

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have prepared to help you is right here.

This project outline is not like the artificial, tidy little problems you are spoon-fed in school, when all the facts you need are included, nothing extraneous is mentioned, the answer is fully specified, along with hints to nudge you toward a single expected canonical solution. This project is much more like the real world of messy problems where it is up to you to fully the define the end point, or a series of ever more difficult versions of this project and research the information yourself to solve them.

Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; or give you any additional materials. I have too many other projects of my own.

Though I am a programmer by profession, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavour.

Please do not email me about this project without reading the disclaimer above.

The Javadoc has been improved over the years to make it easier to navigate. However, there are still many questions you can ask that the current Javadoc cannot easily answer. Your program would organise the class and method signatures in a database in such a way you could ask questions like this: This is a static version of the what I hope a SCID (Source Code In Database) will do dynamically. you need your own custom Doclet to capture Javadoc information for your Database. Here is a simple one to capture method names: That code just captures definitions. To capture references you would have to parse the source or parse the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) byte codes (which is probably easier). You can process the resulting lists of definitions and references by sort and merge (more memory efficient) or by HashMap lookup (easier to program).
Doclet
JASM
parser
sort

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