LASE: An example-based program transformation tool for locating and applying systematic edits

Abstract

Adding features and fixing bugs in software often require systematic edits which are similar, but not identical, changes to many code locations. Finding all edit locations and editing them correctly is tedious and error-prone. In this paper, we demonstrate an Eclipse plug-in called Lase that (1) creates context-aware edit scripts from two or more examples, and uses these scripts to (2) automatically identify edit locations and (3) transform the code. In Lase, users can view syntactic edit operations and corresponding context for each input example. They can also choose a different subset of the examples to adjust the abstraction level of inferred edits. When Lase locates target methods matching the inferred edit context and suggests customized edits, users can review and correct LASE's edit suggestion. These features can reduce developers' burden in repetitively applying similar edits to different methods. The tool's video demonstration is available at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=npDqMVP2e9Q.