Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!hpda!hpcupt1!jamiller
From: jamiller@hpcupt1.cup.hp.com (Jim Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Self-documenting source code
Message-ID: <5940048@hpcupt1.cup.hp.com>
Date: 14 Nov 90 20:51:14 GMT
References: <16900@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 30


>Is anyone aware of any packages or systems which extract documentation
>for use in troff-format man pages or latex documents directly from the
>C source code?
>
>I am thinking along the lines of a token based system of embedding keywords
>into comments which are extracted some sort of parser.
>
>One use would be to extract descriptions and prototypes for library functions.
>It would be a lot easier to ensure that the documentation is up to date if
>it is kept close to the actual code.
>
>Any thoughts or pointers would be appreciated.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Greg Galloway
>Georgia Institute of Technology
>----------

awk (or nawk) is a very useful package that will do what you want :-)

Really, very little work is needed, and you can improve it as you wish.


   jim miller
   jamiller@hpmpeb7.cup.hp.com
   (a.k.a James A. Miller; Jim the JAM; stupid; @!?$$!; ... )
   Anything I say will be used against me ...
   But my company doesn't know or approve or condone anything of mine here.