Calling all C macro gurus...
Is there any way to write a C macro that will replace something like this:
my_var = 5;
with this:
setVar(&my_var, 5);
In other words, can I write a C macro that will override assignments for a specific variable (in the above example, my_var) and instead pass it to a function whose job it is to set that variable? If possible, I'd like to be able to hook into assignments of a specific variable.
EDIT: After thinking about this some more, I'm not sure it could be done. Even if you can come up with a macro to do it, setVar wouldn't necessarily know the type of the variable its setting, so what would be the type of its second argument?
EDIT: The reason I'd like to hook assignments of specific variables is for use in a primitive debugger for some specialized embedded C code. It would be nice to be able to have a "watch list", essentially like you have in an IDE. My first instinct was to try to hook variable assignments with a C macro so you could just drop the macro into your code and have that variable "watched", but then again I've never really written a debugger before so maybe I'm going about that all wrong.
Not with the standard preprocessor. It cannot change the parsing of the file, only replace proper names with a piece of code (and "=" isn't valid in a name).
If you're feeling adventurous, you can try to replace the executable "cpp" with a small script which pre-processes the source code. But that might wreck havoc with the debugging information (file name and, if you're replacing one line of code with several, with line number information, too). The script would call "sed"`:
sed -e 's/my_var\s*=\s*([^;]+);/MY_VAR(my_var, $1);/' file.c > file_tmp.c
But your best bet is probably to put this into a script and simply run it on all your sources. This will change the code and you'll see what is happening in your debugger.
#define setVar(_left_, _right_) *(_left_) = _right_
Related
Can a function tell what's calling it, through the use of memory addresses maybe? For example, function foo(); gets data on whether it is being called in main(); rather than some other function?
If so, is it possible to change the content of foo(); based on what is calling it?
Example:
int foo()
{
if (being called from main())
printf("Hello\n");
if (being called from some other function)
printf("Goodbye\n");
}
This question might be kind of out there, but is there some sort of C trickery that can make this possible?
For highly optimized C it doesn't really make sense. The harder the compiler tries to optimize the less the final executable resembles the source code (especially for link-time code generation where the old "separate compilation units" problem no longer prevents lots of optimizations). At least in theory (but often in practice for some compilers) functions that existed in the source code may not exist in the final executable (e.g. may have been inlined into their caller); functions that didn't exist in the source code may be generated (e.g. compiler detects common sequences in many functions and "out-lines" them into a new function to avoid code duplication); and functions may be replaced by data (e.g. an "int abcd(uint8_t a, uint8_t b)" replaced by a abcd_table[a][b] lookup table).
For strict C (no extensions or hacks), no. It simply can't support anything like this because it can't expect that (for any compiler including future compilers that don't exist yet) the final output/executable resembles the source code.
An implementation defined extension, or even just a hack involving inline assembly, may be "technically possible" (especially if the compiler doesn't optimize the code well). The most likely approach would be to (ab)use debugging information to determine the caller from "what the function should return to when it returns".
A better way for a compiler to support a hypothetical extension like this may be for the compiler to use some of the optimizations I mentioned - specifically, split the original foo() into 2 separate versions where one version is only ever called from main() and the other version is used for other callers. This has the bonus of letting the compiler optimize out the branches too - it could become like int foo_when_called_from_main() { printf("Hello\n"); }, which could be inlined directly into the caller, so that neither version of foo exists in the final executable. Of course if foo() had other code that's used by all callers then that common code could be lifted out into a new function rather than duplicating it (e.g. so it might become like int foo_when_called_from_main() { printf("Hello\n"); foo_common_code(); }).
There probably isn't any hypothetical compiler that works like that, but there's no real reason you can't do these same optimizations yourself (and have it work on all compilers).
Note: Yes, this was just a crafty way of suggesting that you can/should refactor the code so that it doesn't need to know which function is calling it.
Knowing who called a specific function is essentially what a stack trace is visualizing. There are no general standard way of extracting that though. In theory one could write code that targeted each system type the software would run on, and implement a stack trace function for each of them. In that case you could examine the stack and see what is before the current function.
But with all that said and done, the question you should probably ask is why? Writing a function that functions in a specific way when called from a specific function is not well isolated logic. Instead you could consider passing in a parameter to the function that caused the change in logic. That would also make the result more testable and reliable.
How to actually extract a stack trace has already received many answers here: How can one grab a stack trace in C?
I think if loop in C cannot have a condition as you have mentioned.
If you want to check whether this function is called from main(), you have to do the printf statement in the main() and also at the other function.
I don't really know what you are trying to achieve but according to what I understood, what you can do is each function will pass an additional argument that would uniquely identify that function in form of a character array, integer or enumeration.
for example:
enum function{main, add, sub, div, mul};
and call functions like:
add(3,5,main);//adds 3 and 5. called from main
changes to the code would be typical like if you are adding more functions. but it's an easier way to do it.
No. The C language does not support obtaining the name or other information of who called a function.
As all other answers show, this can only be obtained using external tools, for example that use stack traces and compiler/linker emitted symbol tables.
My code looks something like this
while(!eof)
{
if(A)
doSomething;
if(B)
doSomething;
}
A and B are parameters from comand line. There may be also more parameters. I have struct of Bools, in which are all posible parameters and for every parameter, it determines if he exist or not.
Can i make compiler to not read the some part of the code?
I mean, in this code he will check for existence of B every iteration. What i want to achieve is that he will only check once
if(B)
doSomething;
I want this just to optimalize my program and i NEED to have both ifs in one cycle.
Frankly speaking, Ignoring part of code after compilation makes no sense. The code is already compiled. However. you can skip the execution of certain part of code using conditional statements, like if, else-if etc.
FWIW, "Command line parameters" are supplied and considered at run-time. There is no way you can decide (conditional compilation) based on that at compile-time.
However, if you want, you can always check the number of arguments (argc) supplied through command line and take action based on that.
Alternatively, if you wanted to have a conditional compilation, reading something about #ifdef/#ifndef may help.
I am trying to use a function-like macro to generate an object-like macro name (generically, a symbol). The following will not work because __func__ (C99 6.4.2.2-1) puts quotes around the function name.
#define MAKE_AN_IDENTIFIER(x) __func__##__##x
The desired result of calling MAKE_AN_IDENTIFIER(NULL_POINTER_PASSED) would be MyFunctionName__NULL_POINTER_PASSED. There may be other reasons this would not work (such as __func__ being taken literally and not interpreted, but I could fix that) but my question is what will provide a predefined macro like __func__ except without the quotes? I believe this is not possible within the C99 standard so valid answers could be references to other preprocessors.
Presently I have simply created my own object-like macro and redefined it manually before each function to be the function name. Obviously this is a poor and probably unacceptable practice. I am aware that I could take an existing cpp program or library and modify it to provide this functionality. I am hoping there is either a commonly used cpp replacement which provides this or a preprocessor library (prefer Python) which is designed for extensibility so as to allow me to 'configure' it to create the macro I need.
I wrote the above to try to provide a concise and well defined question but it is certainly the Y referred to by #Ruud. The X is...
I am trying to manage unique values for reporting errors in an embedded system. The values will be passed as a parameter to a(some) particular function(s). I have already written a Python program using pycparser to parse my code and identify all symbols being passed to the function(s) of interest. It generates a .h file of #defines maintaining the values of previously existing entries, commenting out removed entries (to avoid reusing the value and also allow for reintroduction with the same value), assigning new unique numbers for new identifiers, reporting malformed identifiers, and also reporting multiple use of any given identifier. This means that I can simply write:
void MyFunc(int * p)
{
if (p == NULL)
{
myErrorFunc(MYFUNC_NULL_POINTER_PASSED);
return;
}
// do something actually interesting here
}
and the Python program will create the #define MYFUNC_NULL_POINTER_PASSED 7 (or whatever next available number) for me with all the listed considerations. I have also written a set of macros that further simplify the above to:
#define FUNC MYFUNC
void MyFunc(int * p)
{
RETURN_ASSERT_NOT_NULL(p);
// do something actually interesting here
}
assuming I provide the #define FUNC. I want to use the function name since that will be constant throughout many changes (as opposed to LINE) and will be much easier for someone to transfer the value from the old generated #define to the new generated #define when the function itself is renamed. Honestly, I think the only reason I am trying to 'solve' this 'issue' is because I have to work in C rather than C++. At work we are writing fairly object oriented C and so there is a lot of NULL pointer checking and IsInitialized checking. I have two line functions that turn into 30 because of all these basic checks (these macros reduce those lines by a factor of five). While I do enjoy the challenge of crazy macro development, I much prefer to avoid them. That said, I dislike repeating myself and hiding the functional code in a pile of error checking even more than I dislike crazy macros.
If you prefer to take a stab at this issue, have at.
__FUNCTION__ used to compile to a string literal (I think in gcc 2.96), but it hasn't for many years. Now instead we have __func__, which compiles to a string array, and __FUNCTION__ is a deprecated alias for it. (The change was a bit painful.)
But in neither case was it possible to use this predefined macro to generate a valid C identifier (i.e. "remove the quotes").
But could you instead use the line number rather than function name as part of your identifier?
If so, the following would work. As an example, compiling the following 5-line source file:
#define CONCAT_TOKENS4(a,b,c,d) a##b##c##d
#define EXPAND_THEN_CONCAT4(a,b,c,d) CONCAT_TOKENS4(a,b,c,d)
#define MAKE_AN_IDENTIFIER(x) EXPAND_THEN_CONCAT4(line_,__LINE__,__,x)
static int MAKE_AN_IDENTIFIER(NULL_POINTER_PASSED);
will generate the warning:
foo.c:5: warning: 'line_5__NULL_POINTER_PASSED' defined but not used
As pointed out by others, there is no macro that returns the (unquoted) function name (mainly because the C preprocessor has insufficient syntactic knowledge to recognize functions). You would have to explicitly define such a macro yourself, as you already did yourself:
#define FUNC MYFUNC
To avoid having to do this manually, you could write your own preprocessor to add the macro definition automatically. A similar question is this: How to automatically insert pragmas in your program
If your source code has a consistent coding style (particularly indentation), then a simple line-based filter (sed, awk, perl) might do. In its most naive form: every function starts with a line that does not start with a hash or whitespace, and ends with a closing parenthesis or a comma. With awk:
{
print $0;
}
/^[^# \t].*[,\)][ \t]*$/ {
sub(/\(.*$/, "");
sub(/^.*[ \t]/, "");
print "#define FUNC " toupper($0);
}
For a more robust solution, you need a compiler framework like ROSE.
Gnu-C has a __FUNCTION__ macro, but sadly even that cannot be used in the way you are asking.
Is there a way to safely check to see whether some named variable (let's call it "foo") is present in the current scope? I'd like to have a macro that, say, makes use of "foo" if it's present, otherwise does something else. Are there any runtime tricks I can make use of here?
(The actual context is trying to solve this problem, but I realized that one could be a special case of this one, so a separate question seemed also interesting.)
Unfortunately, no. The compiler is responsible for parsing variable names and assigning scopes to them, and the preprocessor runs before the compiler. So it has no access to that information.
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What is the difference between a macro and a function in C? Please tell me one application where I can use macros and functions?
The basic difference is that function is compiled and macro is preprocessed. When you use a function call it will be translated into ASM CALL with all these stack operations to pass parameters and return values. When you use a MACRO, C preprocessor will translate all strings using macro and than compile.
Minus of using macros is that they hide implementation. Its way harder to find bug if have one.
In C (and C++) a macro is a preprocessor directive. This means that before your program starts compiling it will go through and process all your macros. Macros are useful because
They can make your program easier to read
They can improve efficiency (as they can be calculated at compile time)
They can shorten long or complicated expressions that are used a lot. For example, we use a macro to get the current log4cpp logger and another few to write to it with various levels.
Disdvatages
Expand the size of your executable
Can flood your name space if not careful. For example, if you have too many preprocessor macros you can accidentally use their names in your code, which can be very confusing to debug.
Example
#define INCREMENT(x) x++
A function is a piece of code that can relatively independently be executed and performs a specific task. You can think of it sort of like a mathematical function: a function given a set of inputs will give a particular output. In C these are defined as
<return type> <name>(<parameters>)
{
//code body
}
You have to think the macro just as a text replacement: is like you inline the macro code every time you see the macro in your code. This is good for "code snippets" because you avoid the function calling overhead, because every time you call a function you have some effort in pushing parameters onto the stack.
And another difference is that in function there is stack overhead but in case of macros there is no stack overhead; it is just the expansion of code.
A function is an operation from values to values, i.e. the kind of data you normally think of a program manipulating (numbers, strings etc.).
A macro is an operation from code to code. It takes a part of a program and uses it to generate a different part for the program.
There is no overlap at all between functions and macros in C; they do not do the same thing. (You cannot write a function from a value to code; you cannot, despite appearances, write a macro from code to a value. I know it looks like you can, but it's important to understand that that isn't what you're actually doing.)
A macro can be made to look like a function, because you can write a macro designed to handle a piece of code that itself generates or represents a value, but that macro is still not operating on the value itself: it is taking the value-generating code (which may be a simple number) and weaving it into value-consuming code (which is what looks like the "body" of the macro). That means that using macros like functions is extremely confusing and not what they are best used for. Functions in contrast actually are a single discrete block of code.
The fact that functions generally run at runtime and macros (in C) always run at compile time is simply a limitation imposed by the fact that values are usually dynamic, and code is usually not available at runtime, respectively. It isn't actually a fundamental aspect of either functions or macros (functions can be inlined and optimised out; macros can be applied to dynamically generated code), and is a bit of a red herring.
Advantage of MACRO is, we define that only once, and if we want to change the value we can make change at only one place, and value gets reflected across the program.