An empirical analysis of C preprocessor use

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Volumn 28, Issue 12, 2002, Pages 1146-1170

  Ernst, Michael D ^a   Badros, Greg J ^b   Notkin, David ^c  

^a USA   (United States)

^b Infospace Inc   (United States)

^c University of Washington   (United States)

Author keywords

C; C preprocessor; C++; Conditional compilation; Cpp; Empirical study; File inclusion; Macro; Macro substitution; Program understanding

Indexed keywords

C (PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE); COMPUTER AIDED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING; ERROR ANALYSIS; SEMANTICS;

LANGUAGE DESIGNERS;

PROGRAM PROCESSORS;

EID: 0036961736     PISSN: 00985589     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1109/TSE.2002.1158288     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. D. Atkins, T. Ball, T. Graves, and A. Mockus, "Using Version Control Data to Evaluate the Impact of Software Tools," Proc. 21st Int'l Conf. Software Eng., pp. 324-333, May 1999.
2. G. Badros and D. Notkin, "A Framework for Preprocessor-Aware C Source Code Analyses," Software-Practice and Experience, vol. 30, no. 8, pp. 907-924, 2000.
3. L.W. Cannon, R.A. Elliott, L.W. Kirchoff, J.H. Miller, R.W. Mitze, E.P. Schan, N.O. Whittington, H. Spencer, D. Keppel, and M. Brader, Recommended C Style and Coding Standards, 6.0 ed., 1990.
4. M.D. Carroll and M.A. Ellis, Designing and Coding Reusable C++. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995.
5. B.J. Cox and A.J. Novobilski, Object Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1991.
6. J.S. Davis, M.J. Davis, and M.M. Law, "Comparison of Subjective Entropy and User Estimates of Software Complexity," Empirical Foundations of Information and Software Science, 1990.
7. P. Deutsch, "ansi2knr," ghostscript distribution from Aladdin Enterprises, ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/, Dec. 1990.
8. A. Dolenc, D. Keppel, and G.V. Reilly, Notes on Writing Portable Programs in C, eighth revision. Nov. 1990, http://www.apocalypse.org/pub/paul/docs/cport/cport.htm.
9. Ellemtel Telecommunication Systems Laboratory, "Programming in C++: Rules and Recommendations," technical report, Ellemtel Telecomm., 1992.
10. D. Evans, J. Guttag, J. Horning, and Y.M. Tan, "LCLint: A Tool for Using Specifications to Check Code," Proc. SIGSOFT '94 Second ACM SIGSOFT Symp. Foundations of Software Eng., pp. 87-96, Dec. 1994.
11. D. Evans, LCLint User's Guide, Aug. 1996, http://lclint.cs.virginia.edu/guide/.
12. J.-M. Favre, "Preprocessors from an Abstract Point of View," Proc. Int'l Conf. Software Maintenance (ICSM '96), Nov. 1996.
13. Gimpel Software, "PC-lint/FlexeLint," http://www.gimpel.com/lintinfo.htm, 1999.
14. GNU Project, GNU C Preprocessor Manual, version 2.7.2. 1996.
15. W.G. Griswold, D.C. Atkinson, and C. McCurdy, "Fast, Flexible Syntactic Pattern Matching and Processing," Proc. IEEE 1996 Workshop Program Comprehension, Mar. 1996.
16. S.P. Harbison and G.L. Steele Jr., C: A Reference Manual, fourth ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995.
17. S.C. Johnson, "Lint, a C Program Checker," Computing Science Technical Report 65, Bell Labs, Murray Hill, N.J., Sept. 1977.
18. 5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme," ACM SIGPLAN Notices, vol. 33, no. 9, pp. 26-76, Sept. 1998.
19. B.W. Kernighan and D.M. Ritchie, The C Programming Language, second ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988.
20. G. Kiczales, J. des Riviéres, and D.G. Bobrow, The Art of the Metaobject Protocol. MIT Press, 1991.
21. E. Kohlbecker, D.P. Friedman, M. Felleisen, and B. Duba, "Hygienic Macro Expansion," Proc. ACM Conf. LISP and Functional Programming, R.P. Gabriel, ed., pp. 151-181, Aug. 1986.
22. M. Krone and G. Snelting, "On the Inference of Configuration Structures from Source Code," Proc. 16th Int'l Conf. Software Eng., pp. 49-57, May 1994.
23. P.E. Livadas and D.T. Small, "Understanding Code Containing Preprocessor Constructs," Proc. IEEE Third Workshop Program Comprehension, pp. 89-97, Nov. 1994.
24. C. Lott, "Metrics Collection Tools for C and C++ Source Code," http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/cml/cmetrics/, 1998.
25. S. Meyers and M. Klaus, "Examining C++ Program Analyzers," Dr. Dobb's J., vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 68, 70-2, 74-5, 87, Feb. 1997.
26. G.C. Murphy, D. Notkin, and E.S.-C. Lan, "An Empirical Study of Static Call Graph Extractors," Proc. 18th Int'l Conf. Software Eng., pp. 90-99, Mar. 1996.
27. S. Paul and A. Prakash, "A Framework for Source Code Search Using Program Patterns," IEEE Trans. Software Eng., vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 463-475, June 1994.
28. D.J. Salomon, "Using Partial Evaluation in Support of Portability, Reusability, and Maintainability," Proc. Compiler Construction, Sixth Int'l Conf., T. Gyimothy, ed., pp. 208-222, Apr. 1996.
29. M. Siff and T. Reps, "Program Generalization for Software Reuse: From C to C++," Proc. SIGSOFT '96 Fourth ACM SIGSOFT Symp. Foundations of Software Eng., pp. 135-146, Oct. 1996.
30. H. Spencer and G. Collyer, "#ifdef Considered Harmful, or Portability Experience with C News," Proc. Usenix Summer 1992 Technical Conf., pp. 185-197, June 1992.
31. D.A. Spuler and A.S.M. Sajeev, "Static Detection of Preprocessor Macro Errors in C," Technical Report 92/7, James Cook Univ., Townsville, Australia, 1992.
32. M. Stachowiak and G.J. Badros, Scwm Reference Manual: The Authoritative Guide to the Emacs of Window Managers, 1999, http://vicarious-existence.mit.edu/scwm/.
33. R. Stallman, GNU Emacs Manual, 10th ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Free Software Foundation, July 1994.
34. R.M. Stallman, Using and Porting GNU CC, version 2.7.2. Boston, Mass.: Free Software Foundation, June 1996.
35. R. Stallman, GNU Coding Standards. GNU Project, July 1997, ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/standards/standards.texi.
36. G.L. Steele Jr., Common Lisp: The Language, second ed. Bedford, Mass.: Digital Press, 1990.
37. B. Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1994.
38. D. Weise and R. Crew, "Programmable Syntax Macros," Proc. ACM SIGPLAN Conf. Programming Language Design and Implementation, pp. 156-165, June 1993.
39. P.T. Zellweger, "An Interactive High-Level Debugger for Control-Flow Optimized Programs," Technical Report CSL-83-1, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, Calif., Jan. 1983.
40. G.K. Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1949.