Re: checkpatch, a patch checking script.

[Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2007 at 01:11:01PM -0400, Dave Jones wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 28, 2007 at 11:11:36AM -0500, Matt Mackall wrote:
>  > > I'm all ears for additional regexps, bug reports or other suggestions.
>  > 
>  > Neat.
>  > 
>  > Does it check for:
>  > 
>  > functions marked extern?
>  > pulling in external functions or variables without a header file?
>  > return used as a function, eg return(foo);?
> 
> These sound a little more tricky than just dumb regexps.
> I don't want to expand this to a fullblown C parser (given
> that we have sparse which can do a better job), but I don't
> object to adding some extra code to give the searches more
> context.

The first is a straightforward one-line regexp, as is the last:

^extern \w.*\w\(
return\s?\(

The middle one is a bit trickier. Basically, we don't want people
doing either:

extern int capital_of_assyria;
int sir_not_appearing_in_this_module();

in .c files. The first of those two is easy, provided you can figure
out the file type. And both are possible with multiline regexps.

This whole thing would be quite a bit more powerful if your search
function joined all the lines together, did a potentially multiline
search, then calculated the line numbers from the search results. Then
you could search for things like:

if (...)
{

if (...) {
  single_statement;
}

Looking forward to fully-automated pedantry. This should probably live
in scripts/.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.