• meta-programming
• CLI
• query

This thesis proposes a query language for code selection. It is designed to work on
virtual machine based languages and is intended to be used to nd regions of code
that match a pattern dened by a query. Queries are dened by methods following
the query-by-example approach and are performed using a query operator. The
query operator we describe is perceived at high level language but performs queries
at virtual machine intermediate language. The matching process and operators
described are similar to the ones used in regular expression pattern matching
but with some dierences, for example, these patterns have code instructions as
symbols.
We have developed a prototype (Code Query) that implements the query op-
erator and provides an API to perform queries. Code Query is implemented in
C# on CLI platform.
Our approach allows cross-language queries with the only constraint that such
languages must target the same virtual machine. Our work can be used to develop
a framework for aspect oriented programming that does not require modication
or extension to the virtual machine compiler and that can match not only join
points but also any arbitrary portion of code.