Many processes can be seen as transformations of tree-like data structures. In compiler construction, for example, we continuously manipulate trees and perform tree transformations. This paper introduces a pattern matching compiler (TOM): a set of primitives which add pattern matching facilities to imperative languages such as C, Java, or Eiffel. We show that this tool is extremely non-intrusive, lightweight and useful to implement tree transformations. It is also flexible enough to allow the reuse of existing data structures.
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