AOPS: an abstraction-oriented programming system for literate programming

The practice of literate programming is not widespread because existing literate programming systems have some undesirable characteristics such as programming language and text processor dependence and lack of flexible tools for viewing and manipulation of the source file. This paper describes the literate programming system AOPS (Abstraction Oriented Programming System) which addresses both of these problems. AOPS is programming language and text processor independent literate programming system. AOPS tools include a hypertext browser, a lister with the ability to select what is presented and what is suppressed, and a filter to extract the program code from the AOPS source file. AOPS introduces the notion of a phantom abstraction that enhances the understandability of the literate program and when used in conjunction with the browser greatly extends the capabilities of AOPS. We also discuss how the design of AOPS supports extension of the concept of literate programming. Finally we report the results of a preliminary experiment that showed that literate programs contain more documentation than traditional programs. CR Categories and Subject Description: D.2.2 [Software Engineering]: Tools and Techniques.