On Sun, 2 Aug 2020, Markus Elfring wrote:

> >>> attribute name __attr__; declares that __attr__ is the name of an attribute.
> >>
> >> Is this specification also a declaration of a metavariable?
> >
> > No.
>
> How do you distinguish between metavariables and other SmPL variables then?

Metavariables don't have "name" in their declaration.  There is a sentence
about that in the documentation.

The {\bf name} modifier specifies that instead of declaring a metavariable
to match over some kind, the identifiers are to be considered as elements
of that kind when they appear in the code.

"instead of declaring a metavariable" says that the thing that is declared
is not a metavariable.

julia


>
>
> >> Will a more helpful explanation be added to the software documentation
> >> like the SmPL manual?
> >> https://github.com/coccinelle/coccinelle/blob/e06b9156dfa02a28cf3cbf0913a10513f3d163ab/docs/manual/cocci_syntax.tex#L452
> >
> > The discussion of attribute name and name in general already seems clear enough.
>
> I got an other impression.
>
>
> >> Which display do you get for the command “spatch --parse-cocci tests/metaattr.cocci”
> >> according to the discussed development version of your software?
> >
> > There is no warning.  The code is now on github.  You can test it yourself.
>
> Should software users get informed about unused items in consistent ways?
> https://github.com/coccinelle/coccinelle/blob/04f36d537b9f6c0c127d05184cccd21f1a46b952/parsing_cocci/check_meta.ml#L711
>
> Regards,
> Markus
>