C++ parser for diagnostics

[Dave Williams]

Hi, I think I have a nice simple requirement, but haven't been able to find
anything to meet it.

All I want to do is to insert a line before every C++ statement in my
application, so that the line is executed before the statement. The line
would be a diagnostic call which would put a line out to a file containing
the current line number etc being executed. This would give me a crude map
of what code was run, and help when I get a crash to know what was the last
line run before the crash.

I appreciate there are whole dev suites which can do this, and that I can
use things like exception handling to catch errors, but I'm after a nice
simple general purpose solution.

I figure if I can find something that will convert "break;" into
"{TRACE_MACRO;break;}" that would be handy, but it would have to know about
C++ lines spanning multiple file lines, and know when the start and ends of
funcitons are, etc, so I guess a crude C++ parser would be required.

Ideally it would read all the files in one directory and create similar
named ones in another, so I can compile the modified version of the app the
same way as the original.

Any hints or tips, or suggestions of better ways to meet my needs, would be
great.

[Jochen Kalmbach [MVP]]

Hi Dave!

All I want to do is to insert a line before every C++ statement in my
application, so that the line is executed before the statement. The line
would be a diagnostic call which would put a line out to a file containing
the current line number etc being executed. This would give me a crude map
of what code was run, and help when I get a crash to know what was the last
line run before the crash.

Why do you want to make such "slow" implementation just for the case
your application crashes?
Why not just create a minidump-file in your own
Unhandled-Exception-Filter? And then you see at least the callstack and,
depending on the settings, even more infos. To make it "handy" you can
use the "symstore" program and "symsrv" to store/retrive the exe/pdb files.
This is the recommended way.

But if you want to trak it by your won, you can use the /Gh compiler
switch. This allows at least the tracking if function-enter/exit (via
_penter / _pleave)

See: /Gh (Enable _penter Hook Function) (Visual C++ Concepts)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en...ore_.2f.gh.asp

This is the only supported "build-in" feature of VC.

All other apps (like Purify) are using "native" (or own-build)
instrumentation of the EXE/DLLs.

--
Greetings
Jochen

My blog about Win32 and .NET
http://blog.kalmbachnet.de/

[Dave Williams]

Thanks very much for that response.

I was thinking of this code beyond just exception handling, but the minidump
stuff sounds neat so we'll look into that too.

I guess the _penter logic can't determine the file/line/funcname of the
function being entered? I'll check it out though.

I was more thinking of a source level preprocessor to addresss this
requirement.

Thanks for the ideas though,
Dave
"Jochen Kalmbach [MVP]" <no********************@holzma.de> wrote in message
news:%2****************@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

Hi Dave!

All I want to do is to insert a line before every C++ statement in my
application, so that the line is executed before the statement. The line
would be a diagnostic call which would put a line out to a file containing the current line number etc being executed. This would give me a crude map of what code was run, and help when I get a crash to know what was the last line run before the crash.
Why do you want to make such "slow" implementation just for the case
your application crashes?
Why not just create a minidump-file in your own
Unhandled-Exception-Filter? And then you see at least the callstack and,
depending on the settings, even more infos. To make it "handy" you can
use the "symstore" program and "symsrv" to store/retrive the exe/pdb

files. This is the recommended way.

But if you want to trak it by your won, you can use the /Gh compiler
switch. This allows at least the tracking if function-enter/exit (via
_penter / _pleave)

See: /Gh (Enable _penter Hook Function) (Visual C++ Concepts)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en...ore_.2f.gh.asp

This is the only supported "build-in" feature of VC.

All other apps (like Purify) are using "native" (or own-build)
instrumentation of the EXE/DLLs.

--
Greetings
Jochen

My blog about Win32 and .NET
http://blog.kalmbachnet.de/

[Ira Baxter]

"Dave Williams" <do**@mail.me> wrote in message
news:Od**************@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...

I was thinking of this code beyond just exception handling, but the minidump stuff sounds neat so we'll look into that too.

I was more thinking of a source level preprocessor to addresss this
requirement.

Dave

The DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit could do this pretty easily.
It is a full C++ parser/transformer/prettyprinter, where you can provide
custom transforms. See
http://www.semdesigns.com/Products/DMS/DMSToolkit.html.

If you follow this link: http://www.semdesigns.com/Products/TestCoverage,
there's a whitepaper on that page that discusses breifly how DMS works,
and precisely how to put instrumentation into code.
--
Ira D. Baxter, Ph.D., CTO 512-250-1018
Semantic Designs, Inc. www.semdesigns.com

[shortblondemark]

Just came across this while researching penter/pleave myself.

These guys at BugSplat (http://www.bugsplatsoftware.com
have a mechanism for capturing crashes that might work for you.

cheers
Mar
-
shortblondemar
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