Re: Weird problem trying to match code inside a function

[Julia Lawall <julia.lawall@lip6.fr>]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2018, Luca Coelho wrote:

> Hi Julia,
>
> I bumped in to another weird problem.  I'm trying to match some code
> inside a function that has a specific struct as a parameter, but I
> can't get it to work.
>
> This is cocci code I tried first:
>
> http://pastebin.coelho.fi/6f8f346822a7c99e.txt
>
> And this is the file I'm trying to match:
>
> http://pastebin.coelho.fi/f73f542932add1c6.txt
>
> The led activate op changed from being a function that returns void to
> one that returns int and I had to backport that.
>
> The strange thing is that if I have only the first rule, it works fine,
> but when I add the second rule it fails.

I didn't look at the code in detail, but there is a restriction on
metavariables that are not position variables that are inherited from one
rule to another.  Such metavariables have to have only one value.  If
there is more than one possible value, the original match fails
completely.

For example, if you do:

@r@
expression E;
@@

f();
...
-g(E);

This will do the right thing for:

f();
if (x)
  g(3);
else g(4);

But if you do:

@r@
expression E;
@@

f();
...
-g(E);

@@
expression r.E;
@@

- xxx(E);

Then nothing will happen at all.  Because in the first rule, it is not
able to find a unique binding for E.

A solution can be:

@r@
expression E;
position p;
@@

f();
...
g(E@p);

@s@
position r.p;
expression E;
@@

- g(E@p);

@@
expression s.E;
@@

- xxx(E);

Position metavariable can take on many values, even if they are inherited.

julia

>
> I can make it work if I match the entire code, without trying to match
> the function in the first rule:
>
> http://pastebin.coelho.fi/46c18ce890330d57.txt
>
> And this is fine for me now, but I'm really curious as to why I had the
> problem with my first implementation...
>
> Can you shed some light?
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Luca.
>
>
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