Pi: A Case Study in Object-Oriented Programming

Abstract

Pi is a debugger written in C + +. This paper explains how object-oriented programming in C + + has influenced Pi's evolution. The motivation for object-oriented programming was to experiment with a browser-like graphical user interface. The first unforeseen benefit was in the symbol table: lazy construction of an abstract syntax-based tree gave a clean interface to the remainder of Pi, with an efficient and robust implementation. Next, though not in the original design, Pi was easily modified to control multiple processes simultaneously. Finally, Pi was extended to control processes executing across multiple heterogeneous target processors.