package atd

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Functions to translate an identifier into one that's not reserved or already taken.

When necessary, identifiers are modified by adding prefixes or suffixes that are compatible with Python syntax.

Important terminology:

  • source space: ideal set of unique identifiers
  • destination space: set of identifiers that were translated from the source space and which guarantees no overlap with a set of reserved identifiers.

The general goal in practice is to minimize the differences between source and destination identifiers.

Things a user might want to do:

  • Given a collection of objects with possibly non-unique names, assign a unique identifier to each object, ideally resembling the original name. For this, use the create function.
  • Given a target language with a set of reserved identifiers, check that a name is not a reserved identifier. If it is, modify the name such that it's not reserved and is a valid identifier in the target language. For this, use the translate function.
type t

The mutable container holding all translation data.

val init : reserved_identifiers:string list -> reserved_prefixes:string list -> safe_prefix:string -> t

Initialize the translation tables by specifying the set of identifiers already reserved in the destination space.

reserved_identifiers are forbidden identifiers, i.e. we guarantee that a translation will never return one of these. safe_prefix is a prefix that will be added to an identifier that matches one of the reserved prefixes (reserved_prefixes).

val create : t -> string -> string

Reserve a new identifier in the source space. If the given name is already an identifier in the source space, a new identifier is created by appending an alphanumeric suffix and returned.

Repeated calls of this function on the same input will produce a different output each time.

val translate : t -> string -> string

Translate an identifier from the source space to the destination space.

This registers the translation of a name if it's not already registered. The translation is a name in the destination space that is not reserved for other uses.

Repeated calls of this function on the same input will produce the same output as the previous times.

val translate_only : t -> string -> string option

Return whether a name exists in the source space. If it exists, return its translation to the destination space.

val reverse_translate : t -> string -> string option

Return whether a name exists in the destination space. If it exists, return its translation to the source space.

val all : t -> (string * string) list

List all the registered identifiers in the source and destination spaces. This is a one-to-one mapping sorted alphabetically. This is meant for testing and for educational purposes.