On Sun, 2 Aug 2020, Markus Elfring wrote:

> >> How do you call the following items in the update step “[PATCH 42/43] tests:
> >> Add test case to match meta attribute”?
> >> https://lore.kernel.org/cocci/25fb4894-65d3-dc57-dbfd-93d3482d8fee@web.de/
> >> https://systeme.lip6.fr/pipermail/cocci/2020-July/008036.html
> >>
> >> attribute name __attr__;
> >> attribute a;
> >
> > attribute a; declares a metavariable that matches attributes.
> >
> > attribute name __attr__; declares that __attr__ is the name of an attribute.
>
> Is this specification also a declaration of a metavariable?

No.

>
>
> > These "name" declarations can be used in the parsing of the C code as a
> > hint that __attr__ should be parsed in a special way.
>
> 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.

>
> 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.

julia