This is doc/cppinternals.info, produced by makeinfo version 4.0b from
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INFO-DIR-SECTION Programming
START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
* Cpplib: (cppinternals).      Cpplib internals.
END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY

   This file documents the internals of the GNU C Preprocessor.

   Copyright 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

   Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.

   Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of
this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also
that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms
of a permission notice identical to this one.

   Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified
versions.


File: cppinternals.info,  Node: Top,  Next: Conventions,  Up: (DIR)

Cpplib--the core of the GNU C Preprocessor
******************************************

   The GNU C preprocessor in GCC 3.0 has been completely rewritten.  It
is now implemented as a library, cpplib, so it can be easily shared
between a stand-alone preprocessor, and a preprocessor integrated with
the C, C++ and Objective-C front ends.  It is also available for use by
other programs, though this is not recommended as its exposed interface
has not yet reached a point of reasonable stability.

   This library has been written to be re-entrant, so that it can be
used to preprocess many files simultaneously if necessary.  It has also
been written with the preprocessing token as the fundamental unit; the
preprocessor in previous versions of GCC would operate on text strings
as the fundamental unit.

   This brief manual documents some of the internals of cpplib, and a
few tricky issues encountered.  It also describes certain behaviour we
would like to preserve, such as the format and spacing of its output.

   Identifiers, macro expansion, hash nodes, lexing.

* Menu:

* Conventions::	    Conventions used in the code.
* Lexer::	    The combined C, C++ and Objective-C Lexer.
* Whitespace::      Input and output newlines and whitespace.
* Hash Nodes::      All identifiers are hashed.
* Macro Expansion:: Macro expansion algorithm.
* Files::	    File handling.
* Index::           Index.


File: cppinternals.info,  Node: Conventions,  Next: Lexer,  Prev: Top,  Up: Top

Conventions
***********

   cpplib has two interfaces--one is exposed internally only, and the
other is for both internal and external use.

   The convention is that functions and types that are exposed to
multiple files internally are prefixed with `_cpp_', and are to be
found in the file `cpphash.h'.  Functions and types exposed to external
clients are in `cpplib.h', and prefixed with `cpp_'.  For historical
reasons this is no longer quite true, but we should strive to stick to
it.

   We are striving to reduce the information exposed in `cpplib.h' to
the bare minimum necessary, and then to keep it there.  This makes clear
exactly what external clients are entitled to assume, and allows us to
change internals in the future without worrying whether library clients
are perhaps relying on some kind of undocumented implementation-specific
behaviour.


File: cppinternals.info,  Node: Lexer,  Next: Whitespace,  Prev: Conventions,  Up: Top

The Lexer
*********

   The lexer is contained in the file `cpplex.c'.  We want to have a
lexer that is single-pass, for efficiency reasons.  We would also like
the lexer to only step forwards through the input files, and not step
back.  This will make future changes to support different character
sets, in particular state or shift-dependent ones, much easier.

   This file also contains all information needed to spell a token,
i.e. to output it either in a diagnostic or to a preprocessed output
file.  This information is not exported, but made available to clients
through such functions as `cpp_spell_token' and `cpp_token_len'.

   The most painful aspect of lexing ISO-standard C and C++ is handling
trigraphs and backlash-escaped newlines.  Trigraphs are processed before
any interpretation of the meaning of a character is made, and
unfortunately there is a trigraph representation for a backslash, so it
is possible for the trigraph `??/' to introduce an escaped newline.

   Escaped newlines are tedious because theoretically they can occur
anywhere--between the `+' and `=' of the `+=' token, within the
characters of an identifier, and even between the `*' and `/' that
terminates a comment.  Moreover, you cannot be sure there is just
one--there might be an arbitrarily long sequence of them.

   So the routine `parse_identifier', that lexes an identifier, cannot
assume that it can scan forwards until the first non-identifier
character and be done with it, because this could be the `\'
introducing an escaped newline, or the `?' introducing the trigraph
sequence that represents the `\' of an escaped newline.  Similarly for
the routine that handles numbers, `parse_number'.  If these routines
stumble upon a `?' or `\', they call `skip_escaped_newlines' to skip
over any potential escaped newlines before checking whether they can
finish.

   Similarly code in the main body of `_cpp_lex_token' cannot simply
check for a `=' after a `+' character to determine whether it has a
`+=' token; it needs to be prepared for an escaped newline of some
sort.  These cases use the function `get_effective_char', which returns
the first character after any intervening newlines.

   The lexer needs to keep track of the correct column position,
including counting tabs as specified by the `-ftabstop=' option.  This
should be done even within comments; C-style comments can appear in the
middle of a line, and we want to report diagnostics in the correct
position for text appearing after the end of the comment.

   Some identifiers, such as `__VA_ARGS__' and poisoned identifiers,
may be invalid and require a diagnostic.  However, if they appear in a
macro expansion we don't want to complain with each use of the macro.
It is therefore best to catch them during the lexing stage, in
`parse_identifier'.  In both cases, whether a diagnostic is needed or
not is dependent upon lexer state.  For example, we don't want to issue
a diagnostic for re-poisoning a poisoned identifier, or for using
`__VA_ARGS__' in the expansion of a variable-argument macro.  Therefore
`parse_identifier' makes use of flags to determine whether a diagnostic
is appropriate.  Since we change state on a per-token basis, and don't
lex whole lines at a time, this is not a problem.

   Another place where state flags are used to change behaviour is
whilst parsing header names.  Normally, a `<' would be lexed as a single
token.  After a `#include' directive, though, it should be lexed as a
single token as far as the nearest `>' character.  Note that we don't
allow the terminators of header names to be escaped; the first `"' or
`>' terminates the header name.

   Interpretation of some character sequences depends upon whether we
are lexing C, C++ or Objective-C, and on the revision of the standard in
force.  For example, `::' is a single token in C++, but two separate
`:' tokens, and almost certainly a syntax error, in C.  Such cases are
handled in the main function `_cpp_lex_token', based upon the flags set
in the `cpp_options' structure.

   Note we have almost, but not quite, achieved the goal of not stepping
backwards in the input stream.  Currently `skip_escaped_newlines' does
step back, though with care it should be possible to adjust it so that
this does not happen.  For example, one tricky issue is if we meet a
trigraph, but the command line option `-trigraphs' is not in force but
`-Wtrigraphs' is, we need to warn about it but then buffer it and
continue to treat it as 3 separate characters.


File: cppinternals.info,  Node: Whitespace,  Next: Hash Nodes,  Prev: Lexer,  Up: Top

Whitespace
**********

   The lexer has been written to treat each of `\r', `\n', `\r\n' and
`\n\r' as a single new line indicator.  This allows it to transparently
preprocess MS-DOS, Macintosh and Unix files without their needing to
pass through a special filter beforehand.

   We also decided to treat a backslash, either `\' or the trigraph
`??/', separated from one of the above newline indicators by
non-comment whitespace only, as intending to escape the newline.  It
tends to be a typing mistake, and cannot reasonably be mistaken for
anything else in any of the C-family grammars.  Since handling it this
way is not strictly conforming to the ISO standard, the library issues a
warning wherever it encounters it.

   Handling newlines like this is made simpler by doing it in one place
only.  The function `handle_newline' takes care of all newline
characters, and `skip_escaped_newlines' takes care of arbitrarily long
sequences of escaped newlines, deferring to `handle_newline' to handle
the newlines themselves.

   Another whitespace issue only concerns the stand-alone preprocessor:
we want to guarantee that re-reading the preprocessed output results in
an identical token stream.  Without taking special measures, this might
not be the case because of macro substitution.  We could simply insert a
space between adjacent tokens, but ideally we would like to keep this to
a minimum, both for aesthetic reasons and because it causes problems for
people who still try to abuse the preprocessor for things like Fortran
source and Makefiles.

   The token structure contains a flags byte, and two flags are of
interest here: `PREV_WHITE' and `AVOID_LPASTE'.  `PREV_WHITE' indicates
that the token was preceded by whitespace; if this is the case we need
not worry about it incorrectly pasting with its predecessor.  The
`AVOID_LPASTE' flag is set by the macro expansion routines, and
indicates that paste avoidance by insertion of a space to the left of
the token may be necessary.  Recursively, the first token of a macro
substitution, the first token after a macro substitution, the first
token of a substituted argument, and the first token after a substituted
argument are all flagged `AVOID_LPASTE' by the macro expander.

   If a token flagged in this way does not have a `PREV_WHITE' flag,
and the routine `cpp_avoid_paste' determines that it might be
misinterpreted by the lexer if a space is not inserted between it and
the immediately preceding token, then stand-alone CPP's output routines
will insert a space between them.  To avoid excessive spacing,
`cpp_avoid_paste' tries hard to only request a space if one is likely
to be necessary, but for reasons of efficiency it is slightly
conservative and might recommend a space where one is not strictly
needed.

   Finally, the preprocessor takes great care to ensure it keeps track
of both the position of a token in the source file, for diagnostic
purposes, and where it should appear in the output file, because using
CPP for other languages like assembler requires this.  The two positions
may differ for the following reasons:

   * Escaped newlines are deleted, so lines spliced in this way are
     joined to form a single logical line.

   * A macro expansion replaces the tokens that form its invocation,
     but any newlines appearing in the macro's arguments are
     interpreted as a single space, with the result that the macro's
     replacement appears in full on the same line that the macro name
     appeared in the source file.  This is particularly important for
     stringification of arguments--newlines embedded in the arguments
     must appear in the string as spaces.

   The source file location is maintained in the `lineno' member of the
`cpp_buffer' structure, and the column number inferred from the current
position in the buffer relative to the `line_base' buffer variable,
which is updated with every newline whether escaped or not.

   TODO: Finish this.


File: cppinternals.info,  Node: Hash Nodes,  Next: Macro Expansion,  Prev: Whitespace,  Up: Top

Hash Nodes
**********

   When cpplib encounters an "identifier", it generates a hash code for
it and stores it in the hash table.  By "identifier" we mean tokens with
type `CPP_NAME'; this includes identifiers in the usual C sense, as
well as keywords, directive names, macro names and so on.  For example,
all of `pragma', `int', `foo' and `__GNUC__' are identifiers and hashed
when lexed.

   Each node in the hash table contain various information about the
identifier it represents.  For example, its length and type.  At any one
time, each identifier falls into exactly one of three categories:

   * Macros

     These have been declared to be macros, either on the command line
     or with `#define'.  A few, such as `__TIME__' are builtins entered
     in the hash table during initialisation.  The hash node for a
     normal macro points to a structure with more information about the
     macro, such as whether it is function-like, how many arguments it
     takes, and its expansion.  Builtin macros are flagged as special,
     and instead contain an enum indicating which of the various
     builtin macros it is.

   * Assertions

     Assertions are in a separate namespace to macros.  To enforce
     this, cpp actually prepends a `#' character before hashing and
     entering it in the hash table.  An assertion's node points to a
     chain of answers to that assertion.

   * Void

     Everything else falls into this category--an identifier that is not
     currently a macro, or a macro that has since been undefined with
     `#undef'.

     When preprocessing C++, this category also includes the named
     operators, such as `xor'.  In expressions these behave like the
     operators they represent, but in contexts where the spelling of a
     token matters they are spelt differently.  This spelling
     distinction is relevant when they are operands of the stringizing
     and pasting macro operators `#' and `##'.  Named operator hash
     nodes are flagged, both to catch the spelling distinction and to
     prevent them from being defined as macros.

   The same identifiers share the same hash node.  Since each identifier
token, after lexing, contains a pointer to its hash node, this is used
to provide rapid lookup of various information.  For example, when
parsing a `#define' statement, CPP flags each argument's identifier
hash node with the index of that argument.  This makes duplicated
argument checking an O(1) operation for each argument.  Similarly, for
each identifier in the macro's expansion, lookup to see if it is an
argument, and which argument it is, is also an O(1) operation.  Further,
each directive name, such as `endif', has an associated directive enum
stored in its hash node, so that directive lookup is also O(1).


File: cppinternals.info,  Node: Macro Expansion,  Next: Files,  Prev: Hash Nodes,  Up: Top

Macro Expansion Algorithm
*************************


File: cppinternals.info,  Node: Files,  Next: Index,  Prev: Macro Expansion,  Up: Top

File Handling
*************

   Fairly obviously, the file handling code of cpplib resides in the
file `cppfiles.c'.  It takes care of the details of file searching,
opening, reading and caching, for both the main source file and all the
headers it recursively includes.

   The basic strategy is to minimize the number of system calls.  On
many systems, the basic `open ()' and `fstat ()' system calls can be
quite expensive.  For every `#include'-d file, we need to try all the
directories in the search path until we find a match.  Some projects,
such as glibc, pass twenty or thirty include paths on the command line,
so this can rapidly become time consuming.

   For a header file we have not encountered before we have little
choice but to do this.  However, it is often the case that the same
headers are repeatedly included, and in these cases we try to avoid
repeating the filesystem queries whilst searching for the correct file.

   For each file we try to open, we store the constructed path in a
splay tree.  This path first undergoes simplification by the function
`_cpp_simplify_pathname'.  For example, `/usr/include/bits/../foo.h' is
simplified to `/usr/include/foo.h' before we enter it in the splay tree
and try to `open ()' the file.  CPP will then find subsequent uses of
`foo.h', even as `/usr/include/foo.h', in the splay tree and save
system calls.

   Further, it is likely the file contents have also been cached,
saving a `read ()' system call.  We don't bother caching the contents of
header files that are re-inclusion protected, and whose re-inclusion
macro is defined when we leave the header file for the first time.  If
the host supports it, we try to map suitably large files into memory,
rather than reading them in directly.

   The include paths are internally stored on a null-terminated
singly-linked list, starting with the `"header.h"' directory search
chain, which then links into the `<header.h>' directory chain.

   Files included with the `<foo.h>' syntax start the lookup directly
in the second half of this chain.  However, files included with the
`"foo.h"' syntax start at the beginning of the chain, but with one
extra directory prepended.  This is the directory of the current file;
the one containing the `#include' directive.  Prepending this directory
on a per-file basis is handled by the function `search_from'.

   Note that a header included with a directory component, such as
`#include "mydir/foo.h"' and opened as
`/usr/local/include/mydir/foo.h', will have the complete path minus the
basename `foo.h' as the current directory.

   Enough information is stored in the splay tree that CPP can
immediately tell whether it can skip the header file because of the
multiple include optimisation, whether the file didn't exist or
couldn't be opened for some reason, or whether the header was flagged
not to be re-used, as it is with the obsolete `#import' directive.

   For the benefit of MS-DOS filesystems with an 8.3 filename
limitation, CPP offers the ability to treat various include file names
as aliases for the real header files with shorter names.  The map from
one to the other is found in a special file called `header.gcc', stored
in the command line (or system) include directories to which the mapping
applies.  This may be higher up the directory tree than the full path to
the file minus the base name.


File: cppinternals.info,  Node: Index,  Prev: Files,  Up: Top

Index
*****

* Menu:

* assertions:                            Hash Nodes.
* escaped newlines:                      Whitespace.
* files:                                 Files.
* hash table:                            Hash Nodes.
* header files:                          Conventions.
* identifiers:                           Hash Nodes.
* interface:                             Conventions.
* lexer:                                 Lexer.
* line numbers:                          Whitespace.
* macros:                                Hash Nodes.
* named operators:                       Hash Nodes.
* newlines:                              Whitespace.
* paste avoidance:                       Whitespace.
* tokens:                                Lexer.
* whitespace:                            Whitespace.



Tag Table:
Node: Top905
Node: Conventions2377
Node: Lexer3322
Node: Whitespace7924
Node: Hash Nodes11977
Node: Macro Expansion14861
Node: Files15008
Node: Index18475

End Tag Table
