"Kees" == Kees Bakker <[email protected]> writes:
Kees> My next question is: is the example invalid for creduce, or do
Kees> you expect that the clang parser knows how to find csmith.h?
Well, neither. It is valid, in the sense that it can be input to C-Reduce.
But C-Reduce's passes will have limited information about what the program
means and how it can be manipulated.
Different C-Reduce passes care to differing extents about the structure of the
input. Depending on what you are doing, the predicate script that you give to
C-Reduce may also care (or not care) about different levels of strucutral
detail.
Kees> If the example is for creduce then that contradicts John's answer
Kees> where he says: "I reduce non-preprocessed C code routinely."
Whatever John is doing, his process doesn't require C-Reduce passes or a script
that inspects programs at a fine level of detail. He might, for example, just
care about getting a "small enough" program that crashes a compiler. That's a
pretty coarse-grain acceptability test.
In contrast, for my recent work that involves C-Reduce, I use tools that need a
fair amount of detail about the reduced programs. They statically analyze the
reduced programs to find various instrumentation points, which I need in order
to decide if a reduced program is acceptable or not. I invoke those static-
analysis tools from my C-Reduce predicate script, and those tools only work on
preprocessed source. So, in contrast to John, when I run C-Reduce for my
project, I preprocess my starting program as an initial step.
In sum, whether or not you need to preprocess your source before running
C-Reduce depends on the nature of the task you are trying to perform.
Kees> Creduce has no -I option, does it?
No, it does not.
Best wishes ---
Eric.
PS --- This is a great line of questions, by the way. Utah folks should
probably turn this discussion into some C-Reduce documentation :-), like maybe
a FAQ.
--
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Eric Eide <[email protected]> . University of Utah School of Computing
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~eeide/ . +1 (801) 585-5512 voice, +1 (801) 581-5843 FAX
