[cfe-dev] Decls are not synonyms for the symbols they represent

[Nico Weber]

Hi,

On 17.09.2008, at 21:52, Ted Kremenek wrote:

>> For this example, I'd like to know why/when we care if all these
>> VarDecls refer to the same variable? Since each VarDecl is "extern",
>> it's the linkers job to bind the actual variable definition (which
>> isn't in this particular translation unit).
>
> Another example would be a client that wanted to rename 'x'.  How
> would it know all of the declarations for the same variable?  There
> are lots of cases where clients, looking the AST for a translation
> unit, want to know which declarations refer to the same thing.

How would that client work? As far as I understand, each translation  
unit has its own AST, so this client needs some kind of linker that  
merges information from several ASTs. For example:

a.c:
int a = 4;
/* use a somewhere below in file*/

b.c:
extern int a;
/* use a somewhere below file */

c.c:
extern int a;
/* use a somewhere below in file*/

If the tool should rename `a` to `importantCache` (or whatever), it  
has to know which of a.c, b.c, and c.c belong to the same project and  
only rename the `a`s in there. More information in a single  
translation unit doesn't help here, some kind of linker is required.

Nico