On Sat, 29 Aug 2020, Markus Elfring wrote:

> Hello,
>
> The following small script variant for the semantic patch language gets accepted
> according to the software combination “Coccinelle 1.0.8-00159-g730dbb03”.
>
> @replacement@
> identifier array, instance, size;
> type T;
> @@
> (
> -sizeof(T)
> |
> -sizeof(*instance->array)
> )
>  *
> +flex_array_size(instance, array,
>                  instance->size
> +               )

This semantic patch will fail if the sizeof(T) option is matched, becuse
then it won't be able to create the + code, since it won't know what array
should be.

>
>
> But I observe data processing difficulties if I would like to mark
> the multiplication operator also for deletion (on a separate line).
>
> elfring@Sonne:~/Projekte/Coccinelle/Probe> spatch --parse-cocci flex_array_size-test2-20200829.cocci
> init_defs_builtins: /usr/local/bin/../lib/coccinelle/standard.h
> File "flex_array_size-test2-20200829.cocci", line 10, column 1, charpos = 103
>   around = '*',
>   whole content = -*
>
>
> Can such a transformation specification become supported?

This doens't work because you have no space beterrn the - and the *.  The
characters - + * ? ( ) | and & are treated in a special way in column 0,
and more generally when there is no whitespace before them in the line.

julia