[cocci] Development challenges for handling of selected code repetitions (with SmPL)?

[Markus Elfring <Markus.Elfring@web.de>]

Hello,

I hope that some software development concerns can be clarified also together
with a script variant (like the following) for the semantic patch language.


@adjustment@
expression call;
expression * pointer;
statement action;
@@
 if (pointer)
+{
    action
 <+... when != puts("Hello");
 call(pointer);
 ...+>
+}


Questionable test result:
Markus_Elfring@Sonne:…/Projekte/Coccinelle/janitor> spatch --parse-cocci move_call_into_if_branch2.cocci
…
12: no available token to attach to


A) Can any collateral evolution become possible according to the shown error message?

B) The information “Dots may be modified with a when clause,
   indicating a pattern that should not occur anywhere within the matched sequence.”
   is provided in the documentation.
   https://gitlab.inria.fr/coccinelle/coccinelle/-/blob/ff57802f2bd1ab1bca063810dbeacf6fdce08b95/docs/manual/cocci_syntax.tex#L1030

   Such when clauses influence extra code which may eventually appear around
   the searched code pattern.
   But I would appreciate here if only selected repetitions of the specified code
   will be taken into account for this use case.
   https://gitlab.inria.fr/coccinelle/coccinelle/-/blob/ff57802f2bd1ab1bca063810dbeacf6fdce08b95/docs/manual/cocci_syntax.tex#L797


Regards,
Markus