JPH0340410B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field of the Invention] The present invention relates to a program creation device that can effectively create and edit program text.

[Technical background of the invention and its problems]

In normal program development, a program consisting of character strings and alphanumeric characters is input from the keyboard, and the program design information and source program code indicated by the character strings and alphanumeric characters are stored and displayed on a display device. While designing the target program and the source program
A program creation device is used in which development into code is performed in an interactive manner with an operator. Here, the design information is for explaining the contents of the program to the user, and is not a program for operating the system. Also, what is the source program code?
is the original program that is translated into machine language.
Expressed using FORTRAN, COBOL, etc.
Program development is performed using a program (referred to as a program text) in which this design information and source program code are mixed.

However, in conventional program creation devices,
Since the number of lines displayed on a CRT display is limited, it is extremely difficult for the user to understand the entire structure of a program text, which has a huge amount of space. Moreover, it is inconvenient for the user that it is difficult to refer to or edit only a specific part of the program text. In other words, since only a portion of the program text can be displayed, it is difficult to grasp the position of the displayed portion in relation to the whole, making it difficult to edit and create. Since the program text contains a mixture of design information and source program code as described above, it has been difficult for the user to refer to only the design information necessary to understand the contents of the program.

[Purpose of the invention]

An object of the present invention is to provide a highly practical program creation device that allows a user to efficiently create and edit a program while grasping the entire program text, as well as to refer to only the design information included in the program text. It is about providing.

[Summary of the invention]

The present invention defines a level of program text input by hand, for example via a coordinate input device, for each set of program components according to its contents, and defines attributes for each program component according to its type. do. That is, the program text is stored in a tree structure using the program components to which these levels and attributes are attached. Then, the tree structure information of this program text is output, and the program components corresponding to the level instruction signal and attribute instruction signal inputted from the coordinate input device are displayed and output.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, it is possible to selectively obtain program components while grasping the overall outline using the tree structure information of the program text, making it possible to create and edit programs in an interactive manner extremely effectively. Become. In addition, attributes can be defined for program components, so for example, if only program components with attributes of design information are displayed, this design information can be referenced from the upper level to the lower level, and the program content It becomes easier to understand. In other words, it is possible to refer to and edit a program by focusing only on the desired part while grasping the entire program text, which has great effects such as greatly aiding the understanding of the program contents.

[Embodiments of the invention]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an embodiment of the apparatus, and numeral 1 in the figure represents a control section comprising a microprocessor or the like. The coordinate input device 2, display 3, printer 4, and memory 5 of this control section 1 are connected.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram of the operation of the control unit 1,
The operation of this embodiment will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 and 5. The control unit 1 is controlled by the user using the coordinate input device 2.
A character string input by hand is recognized, and a program text (edited text) consisting of this character string is sequentially stored in the memory 5. Here memory 5
is used as a work area for expanding and degenerating program text, as will be described later. Before starting this work (before inputting commands by the user), there is a previously created program text in the auxiliary storage device (not shown) in the control unit 1 (floppy disk, etc.). The control unit 1 reads the data into the memory 5 (step 11 in FIG. 5). The following description will be made regarding the case where the user newly inputs program text. First, the user inputs commands (expanding and collapsing the tree structure, expanding and collapsing the display) from the coordinate input device 2 (step 12 in FIG. 5). First, the user inputs a command to expand the tree structure (Step 13 in Figure 5), and then inputs the desired program text using the coordinate input device 2 (Step 5 in Figure 5).
Figure step 14). The control unit 1 adds level and attribute identification codes to each set of program descriptions (program components) to the program text consisting of input character strings (this is called creating a tree structure) (steps in Figure 5). 15). Here, a program component is defined as a minimum unit description block in a program. Level is a class value that represents the degree of detail of the content in the tree structure of the program components. For example, level 1 (upper level) represents headings, titles, etc. in the program, and level 2 (middle level) Outline explanation during the program,
It represents major instruction steps, etc., and level 3 (lower level) represents detailed explanations in the program, detailed calculation routines, etc. In addition, attributes represent the types of program components mentioned above.For example, design information in program text is an explanation for the user, so a human attribute (&) is added, and lease program code is written in machine language. Since this is a program to be translated, the computer attribute (%) is added. Further, as will be described later, this attribute mark (&, %) is also a mark indicating that there is a program component at a lower level. Other types of attributes include an instruction part and a data part in a program, a main program and a group of subroutines, and the like. The operation of adding level and attribute codes to program components by the control unit 1 may be performed by a user's instruction when inputting a program from an input device, or the control unit 1
may be added automatically. In the former case, when the user instructs a "user-oriented" command via the input device, a human attribute symbol (&) is added to the program that is subsequently input. Also, when the user first inputs the title of the program (for example, functional specification), level 1 is added to it, and when a command to instruct "detailing" is input subsequently, the program with the function description input below is added. is assigned level 2. In this way, when the user finishes inputting all the desired program text (for example, (End〓〓)
The control section 1 displays the input program text on the display 3 (by instructions from keys, etc.), and displays the above-mentioned levels and attributes added to each of the program components (Step 16 in Figure 5). . The display contents at this time are shown in Figure 2.
Programs below the functional specification are design information, so they are marked with &; programs below CODE are source program code, so they are marked with %. Further, levels (1, 2, 3) are assigned corresponding to each component. (Since the level 3 component is the lowest level, attributes (&, %) are not attached to it.) Hereinafter, these levels and attribute codes will be collectively referred to as tree structure information. By viewing this tree structure information, the user can grasp the entire structure of the program text. FIG. 3 is a diagram schematically showing the structure of the program text to which this tree-structured information is added (tree-structured). In this figure, there are a group of program components at the lower level (level 3), a set of (A1, A2) and a set of (B1, B2), which are program configurations with attributes of design information. Functional explanation A and functional explanation B of the element are respectively defined (however, & is not added when displayed), and the functional explanation A and functional explanation B of these program components are at an intermediate level (level 2). It is defined as a set of program components as a functional specification with attributes of design information. Also, as a group of program components at a lower level, (C ₁₁ , C ₁₂ ), (C ₂₁ , C ₂₂ ,
There are three sets, C ₂₃ ) and (C ₃₁ , C ₃₂ ), which are respectively defined as program components C ₁ , C ₂ , and C ₃ that have source program code attributes. (However, % is not added when displayed.) These program components C ₁ , C ₂ , and C ₃ are defined as a set of medium-level program components, and the source program code is defined as a CODE with attributes. be done. These are the program components at the intermediate level (Level 2). functional specifications,
CODE defines a series of program text titles as an upper level (level 1).
In addition, as shown in Figure 3, the functional specifications and CODE
are the same program component, but when displayed, & and % are added to each.

Next, a case will be described in which the user inputs a command to delete the program text (degenerate the tree structure) from the coordinate input device 2. Following this command input (step 17 in FIG. 5), the user specifies the program component (level and attribute) to be deleted via the input device 1 (step 18 in FIG. 5). Before this deletion specification work, although not shown in the flow of FIG. 5, the program text and tree structure information shown in FIG. 2 are displayed on the display 3, and the user can select the levels and attributes to be deleted. may also be specified. Thereafter, the control unit 1 deletes the specified program component from the program text stored in the memory 5 (fifth
Figure step 19). For example, the user (level ≧ 2)
When (&) is specified, the control unit 1 has human attributes and program components of levels 2 and 3 (in FIG. 3, function descriptions A and B of level 2, A ₁ , A ₂ of level 3,
B ₁ , B ₂ ).

Next, a case will be described in which the user inputs a command to instruct display expansion from the coordinate input device 2 (step 20 in FIG. 5). The development of the display mentioned here differs from the development and deletion of the program text itself as in steps 13 and 17 described above.The program text itself stored in the memory 5 remains unchanged, but the program text itself that should be displayed is It selects and displays program components. Following the above command, the user inputs the coordinate input device 2.
The level and attributes of the program component to be displayed are specified (Step 21 in Figure 5). Control part 1
Then, the program component corresponding to the specified level and attribute is extracted from the program text stored in the memory 5 and displayed on the display 3 (step 22 in FIG. 5). For example, the user uses the coordinate input device 2 (level 2) (&)
When this command is input, program components having human attributes (design information) at levels 1 and 2 are displayed together with their tree structure information, as shown in FIG. In addition, in this figure 4, the attributes of the computer language (%)
Level 1 CODE with
This is intentionally displayed because it is the minimum necessary information (heading) to indicate the existence of a computer language in the stored program text. Third
The program components marked with diagonal lines in the figure represent those not shown in Fig. 4, but the functional explanations A and B marked by the user are marked &.
If you want to know more details (lower level explanation), specify (level 3) and (&), and the program components A ₁ , A ₂ , B ₁ , and B ₂ in Figure 3 will be displayed. Ru.

When the user inputs a command to instruct display degeneration (deletion) using the coordinate input device 2 (Step 23 in Figure 5), following this command, specifying the level and attribute to be hidden (Step 23). 5
At step 24 in FIG. 5, the control section 1 retrieves program components that do not have the specified level and attributes from the program text stored in the memory 5 and displays them (step 25 in FIG. 5). For example, if the user specifies (level≧1) and (%), only design information necessary for humans will be displayed.

In this embodiment, the user can also specify the output format to the printer 4 via the coordinate input device 2.
The user first inputs a command for the printer's output format (Step 26 in Figure 5), and then specifies the output format (Step 27 in Figure 5). It specifies whether to output in a solid format as shown in Figure 3 or in a tree structure format as shown in Figure 3. The control section 1 outputs the program components to the printer 4 in accordance with the specified output format (step 28 in FIG. 5).

When the user finishes the editing work described above, he inputs an end command from the coordinate input device 2 (step 29 in FIG. 5). When this command is input, the control unit 1 writes the program text stored in the memory 5 to an auxiliary storage device (such as a floppy disk) in the control unit 1 (not shown) (step 30 in FIG. 5). Finish the series of processing.

It should be noted that the user has performed step 13 in FIG. 5 mentioned above.
If none of the commands corresponding to 17, 20, 23, 26, or 29 are input, the control unit 1
(Step 5 in Figure 5)
31).

As described in detail above, the user grasps the overall structure of the program text from the tree structure information and displays the program components to be created/edited on the display according to their level and attributes. It becomes possible to perform the processing interactively. This means that the user can refer to the program components of the target part of the program text that has the specified attributes, and program text that has attributes other than the specified attributes is ignored as unnecessary information at that point. This means that the display state can be set, making it possible to effectively understand, create, and edit programs. In addition, great practical effects can be achieved, such as being able to effectively narrow down the processing focus to a target portion.

Note that the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments. For example, the level defined for each set of program components may be determined according to the structure of the program text. In other words, it is of course possible to further hierarchize the tree structure. It is also possible to change the output display order of program components (upper level→lower level, lower level→upper level) according to such a tree structure. Furthermore, the attributes of a program component are not limited to two types, design information and source program code, but can include two or more. It is also possible to apply the idea of the present invention to a document creation device, and in short, the present invention can be implemented with various modifications without departing from the gist thereof.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG.
The figure shows an example of the program text and tree structure information, Figure 3 schematically shows the tree structure of the program text, Figure 4 shows an example of display of program components, and Figure 5 shows the implementation of this implementation. FIG. 3 is an operation flow diagram of an example control unit. 1...Control unit, 2...Coordinate input device, 3...Display, 4...Printer, 5...Memory.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. An input means for inputting a program text; A means for converting the program text inputted by the input means into a tree structure for each constituent element; means for specifying a level representing the level of detail of the content in the tree structure of this component and an attribute representing the type of the component, for each of the component elements, and the configuration in which the level and attributes are specified by this means. 1. A program creation device comprising means for selectively outputting and displaying only constituent elements corresponding to a desired level or attribute from among the elements.