Disclosed herein are techniques for creating and using tokens representing portions of programming code. Techniques include identifying a body of programming code; associating a plurality of tokens with respective portions of the body of programming code to generate a token-based representation of the body of programming code, wherein the associating comprises determining at least one canonical representation of at least one of the respective portions of the body of programming code; providing the token-based representation of the body of programming code to an emulator, the emulator being configured to interpret token-based representations; and receiving, from the emulator, an emulation result.