programming stuff

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Thus spoke Kragen Sitaker:

> Other things I've been thinking about: it would be *really* helpful to
> be able to click on an identifier in the source and immediately be
> taken to the definition of what it refers to.  Since the compiler and
> linker have to figure this out anyway, it doesn't seem like it would be
> too much to ask for them to write it down so we can see it.
> 
> Such a database would be very helpful in answering questions like these:
> - What is the set of functions that could get called, directly or
> 	indirectly, from this one?
> - What is the set of places where this data I'm writing could be read?
> - What is the set of places where this data I'm reading could have been
> 	written?
> 
> Given a database of what-identifier-refers-to-what-definition, these
> questions would be trivial to give reasonable answers to.  (Of course,
> sophisticated analysis could reduce the size of these sets somewhat,
> and wild pointers can violate anything.)
> 
> What other questions would you like to ask a database like this?

I would look at Keith Gallagher's work on program slicing.  Start from
www.cs.loyola.edu/~kbg, and move on from there.

He attempts to ask these kinds of questions and answer them.  They are less
trivial then you think...

-- 
     -  bkuhn@ebb.org    -    Bradley M. Kuhn    -    bkuhn@acm.org  -
                         http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn