Question

I’ve inherited a bunch of test scripts which look something like this:

// make connection on standard port (FD)
ot 11 02 00 0F FD
// wait for ACK
in 12 ackValue
// wait for connection confirmation
in 13 ackValue 09 88
//send 5 bytes of arbitary data
ot 21 ackValue 05 01 02 03 04 05

And so on.

I would like to write my own simpiler test scripts which are a layer above the above and which can be parsed to automatically produce the above script, such that my script looks something like this:

MAKE_STANDARD_CONNECTION
SEND_DATA (01,02,03,04,05)

So when MAKE_STANDARD_CONNECTION is parsed it will produce the first six lines in the former script. This will allow me to quickly update all scripts if standard port should change from 0xFD to something else…

I’m guessing that there are tools available to do this but what are they? I am a programmer so I can code this if neccessary with python being my language of choice.

Thanks for your help,

Barry

Answer 1

I recommend you to implement it as an internal DSL on top of Python. Make it:

MAKE_STANDARD_CONNECTION()
SEND_DATA('01','02','03','04','05')

With it being real Python code that auto-generates your proprietary script. Python is very readable and comfortable to write, and by doing it as an internal DSL, you get all the power of Python at your disposal. For example, you can do:

values = [somefunc(i) for i in range(5)]
MAKE_STANDARD_CONNECTION()
SEND_DATA(*values)

With somefunc being an arbitrary computation. To implement this in an external DSL (i.e. a scripting language of your own) you’d have to implement loops and more constructs. Python gives you this for free, and this is just a small example of the capabilities.

If this sounds interesting, google a bit for “external DSL” versus “internal DSL” to get a feel of what I’m talking about. There are enough weird, proprietary, poorly implemented “scripting languages” in this world. Giving birth to another one is usually a bad idea.