[cocci] Wider applications of SmPL conjunctions?

[cocci] Wider applications of SmPL conjunctions?

[Markus Elfring]

Hello,

Special “conjunctions” are supported also by the semantic patch language.
https://gitlab.inria.fr/coccinelle/coccinelle/-/blob/cc7ff34b307724845875be57d5fe9a5fadb36844/docs/manual/cocci_syntax.tex#L1041

I accordingly got some impressions from applications of this software functionality.

Some source code search patterns can be combined then by the SmPL operator “&”.
It seems that an ordering of involved items would be more reasonable
for such a combination than others.

* An identifier can be searched.
  It can be determined then also to which expression it would belong.

* A specific compound statement can be searched
  (together with included metavariables as needed).
  If you would like to avoid the repetition of the same specification
  for a subsequent search, it can be a corresponding metavariable defined
  based on the type “statement”.

* Would statement lists match the next bigger item in the abstraction hierarchy?

* Will development interests grow for further topics?

  Example:
  Add a metavariable for the handling of source code
  2018-05-23
  https://github.com/coccinelle/coccinelle/issues/140


Regards,
Markus