Board 348: Poster - Unified Regular Expression Antipattern Language (UREAL)

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

6-23-2024

Abstract

In this work in progress poster, we discuss the unification of regular expressions to find antipatterns in WebTA. Unified Regular Expression Antipattern Language (UREAL) seeks to unify regular expression (regex) antipatterns where the only difference is syntax. UREAL captures syntactic differences by language through regex tokenization. Instead of specifying the specific regex for each code structure, we specify a UREAL token which is usable across languages. We then use these UREAL tokens to create the regex antipatterns. We are able to automatically substitute language-specific regex into UREAL expressions when using them to parse a given language to find antipatterns. By unifying the regex in this way, we are able to reduce development overhead for new languages, increasing the time that can be spent encoding new antipatterns and providing quality feedback. Increasing the effectiveness and language diversity of WebTA will help students improve their programming skills regardless of chosen language and will help instructors draw upon a deeper antipattern library. This design-based research will be evaluated on understandability, portability, and antipattern coverage.

Publication Title

ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings

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