System.identityHashCode() is not always unique; we have to track ourselves. That's ok, it's only for debugging, though it's expensive: we have to create a hashtable with all tree nodes in it.

Add a child to the tree t. If child is a flat tree (a list), make all in list children of t. Warning: if t has no children, but child does and child isNil then you can decide it is ok to move children to t via t.children = child.children; i.e., without copying the array. Just make sure that this is consistent with have the user will build ASTs.

If oldRoot is a nil root, just copy or move the children to newRoot. If not a nil root, make oldRoot a child of newRoot. old=^(nil a b c), new=r yields ^(r a b c) old=^(a b c), new=r yields ^(r ^(a b c)) If newRoot is a nil-rooted single child tree, use the single child as the new root node. old=^(nil a b c), new=^(nil r) yields ^(r a b c) old=^(a b c), new=^(nil r) yields ^(r ^(a b c)) If oldRoot was null, it's ok, just return newRoot (even if isNil). old=null, new=r yields r old=null, new=^(nil r) yields ^(nil r) Return newRoot. Throw an exception if newRoot is not a simple node or nil root with a single child node--it must be a root node. If newRoot is ^(nil x) return x as newRoot. Be advised that it's ok for newRoot to point at oldRoot's children; i.e., you don't have to copy the list. We are constructing these nodes so we should have this control for efficiency.

Tell me how to create a token for use with imaginary token nodes. For example, there is probably no input symbol associated with imaginary token DECL, but you need to create it as a payload or whatever for the DECL node as in ^(DECL type ID). This is a variant of createToken where the new token is derived from an actual real input token. Typically this is for converting '{' tokens to BLOCK etc... You'll see r : lc='{' ID+ '}' -> ^(BLOCK[$lc] ID+) ; If you care what the token payload objects' type is, you should override this method and any other createToken variant.

Tell me how to create a token for use with imaginary token nodes. For example, there is probably no input symbol associated with imaginary token DECL, but you need to create it as a payload or whatever for the DECL node as in ^(DECL type ID). If you care what the token payload objects' type is, you should override this method and any other createToken variant.

This is generic in the sense that it will work with any kind of tree (not just Tree interface). It invokes the adaptor routines not the tree node routines to do the construction.

create tree node that holds the start and stop tokens associated with an error. If you specify your own kind of tree nodes, you will likely have to override this method. CommonTree returns Token.INVALID_TOKEN_TYPE if no token payload but you might have to set token type for diff node type.

Transform ^(nil x) to x and nil to null