[cfe-dev] C++ algorithm analysis tool

[Kirill Bobyrev via cfe-dev]

Hi Chris,

To my knowledge, there isn't.

I don't recall where I got the idea, but I gave it a try last summer 
trying to implement a clang-tidy check doing what you proposed. I didn't 
have enough time to complete it, though, and I only managed to detect 
one or two very simple patterns.

After thinking about this idea for some time I found that clang-tidy 
might be a perfect place for that, not sure whether a separate tool 
would be beneficial. The task of detecting a specific pattern is very 
similar to what clang-tidy checks do in a wide range of tasks. Also, 
there'd be a separate heuristic set for each standard algorithm, which 
makes the partitioning into different checks (for each popular standard 
library algorithm) natural.

In my opinion, such checks would be useful, I'd be interested in seeing 
a proof-of-concept of some sort.

One more idea I have in mind: it might be interesting to try using 
CloneChecker (a check of Clang Static Analyzer) to detect similar 
patterns in a generic way, but I'm not sure how beneficial that would be 
in practice. Still, might worth a try.

+CC Alex, he might have some thoughts about this.

Kind regards,
Kirill


On 01/04/17 02:42, Christopher Di Bella via cfe-dev wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> Just wondering if there's a clang tool that can analyse an algorithm 
> to suggest where standard algorithms can be replace handwritten algos?
> E.g.
>
> int i = 0;
> for (; i < v.size(); ++i)
>    if (v[i] == expected)
>       break;
> if (i != v.size())
>    some_function(v[i]);
>
> Can be rewritten to
>
> auto i = find(v.begin(), v.end(), expected);
> if (i != v.end())
>    some_function(*i);
>
> or in C++17:
>
> if (auto i = find(v.begin(), v.end(), expected); i != v.end())
>    some_function(*i);
>
> If not, how difficult a task is it to write such a tool? Is there 
> anything that one should take into special consideration while writing 
> this tool? Do you think it would have a lot of use-cases? (I do, based 
> on my company's code base, and code I have seen while marking 
> assignments).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> cfe-dev mailing list
> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
> http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/attachments/20170401/2a3d7651/attachment.html>