> To me, an identifier is something that's written literally into the
> source code and cannot be meaningfully taken apart, e.g. a function
> name, variable name, or the member of a struct. An expression, on the
> other hand, is something that can be meaningfully split into
> sub-components. Is that also how you use these terms?
Yes, in principle.
The Coccinelle software was designed for the generation of semantic patches.
1. Its tool "spatch" expects some input and will usually produce
corresponding output.
2. One kind of such input are source files for which data processing
is also directly supported if they were mostly written in a programming
language like "C".
3. Another kind of required input is the specification of source code search
or transformation patterns in the semantic patch language.
4. Special data processing is also possible just because the programming
languages "OCaml" and "Python" can be used in SmPL script rules already.
5. There are several languages involved. SmPL script developers need to be
careful about the relevant syntax context.
* So while you are looking from a view of "C source", you might tend
to think about "C identifiers". The semantic patch language provides
metavariables which can get the data type "identifier".
* But what was an "item" in the source language can become an other
in the Coccinelle technology.
One example is the use of a metavariable with the type "idexpression"
in your case. At which places would you start to think about a code
situation by the means of "expressions"?
* Syntax constructs from the supported source languages are matched with
"key words" that are often similar (or even identical) to the host language
(within SmPL scripts).
>> @ connects patterns that match the same term. So match a term against the
>> explicit name ptr and also match it against an identifier expression that
>> has a particular type. This is not exactly a beginner example.
>
> Okay, I'll just ignore that for now.
>
>>> I'd hate to waste your time asking tons of such trivial questions on the
>>> mailing list, but I just can't find any helpful documentation at all...
>>
>> If you look on the web page in the papers and slides section, at the top
>> there are several tutorials and overview talks, some with video.
>
> I think I looked at everything that is not a video.
Thanks for your feedback.
> But none of it mentioned that you can put an arbitrary name between the @@
I got an other impression from the available documentation.
> or explained what the different metavariable types (idexpression,
> expression, etc) are.
I see some improvement possibilities there, too.
> Anyway, enough whining. Coccinelle seems like a really useful tool,
Yes, of course.
> even if I'm having an impedance mismatch with its documentation.
Do you see further chances to reduce this mismatch for following
software developers?
Regards,
Markus
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