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    <p>The key problem with "style checkers" is that style is like art: everybody has a different opinion about what is good style and what is not. The implication is that style checkers will always need to be customized to the local art tastes.</p> <p>To do this right, one needs a full C++ parser with access to symbol definitions, scoping rules and ideally various kinds of flow analyses. AFAIK, CppCheck does not provide accurate parsing or symbol table definitions, so its error checking can't be both deep and correct. I think Coverity and Fortify offer something along these lines using the EDG front end; I don't know if their tools offer access to symbol tables or data flow analyses. Clang is coming along.</p> <p>You also need a way to write the style checks. I think all the tools offer access to an AST and perhaps symbol tables, and you can hand code your own checks, at the cost of knowing the AST intimately, which is hard for a big language like C++. I think Coverity and Fortify have some DSL-like scheme for specifying some of the checks.</p> <p>If you want to <em>fix</em> code that is style incorrect, you need something that can modify the code representation. Coverity and Fortify do not offer this AFAIK. I believe Clang does offer the ability to modify the AST and regenerate code; you still have to have pretty intimate knowledge of the AST structure to code the tree hacking logic and get it right.</p> <p>Our <a href="http://www.semanticdesigns.com/Products/DMS/DMSToolkit.html" rel="nofollow">DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit</a> and its <a href="http://www.semanticdesigns.com/Products/FrontEnds/CppFrontEnd.html" rel="nofollow">C++ front end</a> provide most of these capabilities. Using its C++ front end, DMS can parse ANSI C++11, GCC4 (with C++11 extensions) and MSVS 2010 (with its C++11 extensions), build ASTs and symbol tables with full type information. One can also ask for the type of an arbitrary expression AST node. At present, DMS computes control flow but not data flow for C++. </p> <p>An AST API lets you procedurally code arbitrary checks; or make changes to the AST to fix problems, and then DMS's prettyprinter can regenerate complete, compilable source text with comments and preserved literal format information (eg., radix of numbers, etc.). You have to know the AST structure to do this, just like other tools, but it is a lot easier to know, because it is isomorphic to the DMS C++ grammar rules. The C++ front end comes with the our C++ grammar. [DMS uses GLR parsers to make this possible].</p> <p>In addition, one can write patterns and transformations using DMS's Rule Specification Language, using the surface syntax of C++ itself. One might code OPs "dont throw nonSTL exceptions" as</p> <pre><code> pattern nonSTLexception(i: IDENTIFIER):statement = " throw \i; " if ~derived_from_STD_exception(i); </code></pre> <p>The stuff inside the (meta)quotes is C++ source code with some pattern-matching escapes, e.g, "\i" refers to the placeholder varible "i" which must be a C++ IDENTIFIER according the rule; the entire "throw \i;" clause must be a C++ "statement" (a nonterminal in the C++ grammar). The rule itself mainly expresses syntax to be matched, but can invoke semantic checks (such as "~is_derived_from_STD_exception") applied to matched subtrees (in this case, whatever "\i" matched).</p> <p>In writing such patterns, you don't have to know the shape of the AST; the pattern knows it, and it is automatically matched. If you've ever coded AST walkers, you will appreciate how convenient this is.</p> <p>A match knows the AST node and therefore the precision position (file/line/column) which makes it easy to generate reports with precise location information.</p> <p>You need to add a custom routine to DMS, "inherits_from_STD_exception", to verify the identifier tree node passed to that routine is (as OP desired) a class derived from std::exception. This requires finding "std::exception" in the symbol table, and verifying that the symbol table entry for the identifier tree node is a class declaration and transitively inherits from other class declarations (by following symbol table links) until the std::exception symbol table entry is found.</p> <p>A DMS transformation rule is a pair of patterns stating in essence, "if you see <em>this</em>, then replace it by <em>that</em>".</p> <p>We've built several custom style checkers with DMS for both COBOL and C++. Its still a fair amount of work, mostly because C++ is a pretty complex language and you have to think carefully about the precise meaning of your check.</p> <p>Trickier checks and those tests that start to fall into deep static analysis require access to control and data flow information. DMS computes control flow for C++ now, and we're working on data flow analysis (we've already done this for Java, IBM Enterprise COBOL and a variety of C dialects). Analysis results are tied back to the AST nodes so that one can use patterns to look for elements of the style check, and then follow the data flows to tie the elements together if needed.</p> <p>When all is said and done with DMS, (or indeed with any of the other tools that deal with C++ in any halfway accurate way), is that coding additional or complex style checks is unlikely to be "convenient". You should hope for "possible with good technical background."</p>
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