Lightweight program (which we call filters) operate on program source files and/or data files and produce data files. The filters can be stacked in pipelines, where each filter in the pipeline reads data files generated by prior filters and in turn generates new data files. The design motivation behind this structure is to allow pipelines of filter programs to be constructed to implement program analysis. This modular design is important to isolate the language-specific first pipeline stages from later language-independent modules and in this way support sophisticated analysis for multilingual condebases.
> >
Lightweight program (which we call filters) operate on program source files and/or data files and produce data files. The filters can be stacked in pipelines, where each filter in the pipeline reads data files generated by prior filters and in turn generates new data files. The design motivation behind this structure is to allow pipelines of filter programs to be constructed to implement program analysis. This modular design is important to isolate the language-specific first pipeline stages from later language-independent modules and in this way support sophisticated analysis for multilingual codebases.