UML Class Diagrams from C++ Code

I needed a UML class diagram of the classes I use in the implementation ofCScout refactoring browser.I drew the last such diagram on paper about four years ago, so it wasdefinitely out of date.I always say that whenever possible documentation should be automaticallygenerated from the code, so I decided to automate the task.

An appropriate tool for this job is UMLGraph.Unfortunately for the task at hand,its input is following the Java syntax.Getting the appropriate data from the C++ code, didn't require more than10 minutes of work.In this particular C++ code I only used single inheritance, and the subclass andsuperclass always appeared on the same line.Taking advantage of these two facts I could simply locate the linescontaining public :,and convert them into a corresponding Java class definition.Thus

class Mysql: public Sql {
        // ...
}

would become

class Mysql extends Sql {}

The following pipeline was enough to take inheritance specificationsfrom the C++ code and transform them into UMLGraph's Java syntax.

grep -h ":.*public" *.h |
sed 's/class //;s/://;s/public //;s/{//;s/  */ /g' |
awk '{print "class " $1 " extends " $2 " {}"}'

Here is a part of the final result.