Program source file preprocessing method and apparatus to detect modifications and generate a class of files

摘要

A data processing method and apparatus are disclosed in which the class definition is first read from the class definition file to generate the structure and procedure definitions in memory. The pre-existence of a file storing the structure definition is then determined. If the file already exists, the structure definition in the memory is compared with the structure definition previously stored to the file to determine whether there is a meaningful difference between the two. If the file does not exist, or if there is a meaningful difference, the structure definition in memory is written to a newly created file or to the existing file. This same operation is executed for the procedure definitions.