reflex-transform-example

An example of using a scanner generator to create a simple file transformation

This example is a transform that might be applied to student Python projects before comparing them -- since it is easy to change comments or variable names, I'll strip out the comments and change all variables to "v". Tools like MOSS, used for plagiarism detection, use a 'normalization' filter like this for each programming language they process.

Pre-requisites:
RE/flex must be installed in the standard places, with a library in /usr/local/lib, include files in /usr/local/include/reflex, and 'reflex' on the search path. (The CIS 461 docker file has RE/flex installed this way.)

To build

(on a Unix system, including MacOS):

make

This will invoke the Makefile in the 'src' directory and produce a binary in the 'bin' directory.

To run

(after building)

bin/py_strip < data/assembler_pass1_save.py

The last several lines of the output should look like this:

def i():
    """@"""
    i = i()
    i = [i.i() for i in i.i.i()]
    i, i = i(i)
    i.i("@".format(i))
    if i == 0:
        i(i, i)
    if i == 0:
        for i in i:
            print(i, i=i.i)
    i.i.i()
    i.i("@")
if _ == "@":
    i()