Treehugger
Treehugger is a library for parsing, analyzing, and manipulating source code, primarily designed for Java but with support for other languages. It provides an abstract syntax tree (AST) representation of code, enabling developers to programmatically inspect and modify code structures for tasks like refactoring, linting, or generating documentation. It is often used in static analysis tools, code generation, and educational applications.
Developers should learn Treehugger when building tools that require deep code analysis, such as custom linters, automated refactoring scripts, or code quality checkers. It is particularly useful in scenarios where you need to traverse and manipulate code without executing it, like in IDE plugins or continuous integration pipelines for enforcing coding standards. For example, use it to automatically rename variables across a codebase or detect patterns like unused imports.