+

+<JoshTriplett> As far as the parsing structures go...

+<JoshTriplett> The C parser exists in two main files: parse.c, which parses statements, and expression.c, which parses expressions.

+<JoshTriplett> parse.h contains the definition of struct statement, which represents a C statement.

+<JoshTriplett> That includes only those things which can't appear as an expression, which primarily includes control flow statements such as if, loops, switch/case, and goto.

+<JoshTriplett> expression.h contains the definition of struct expression, which represents a C expression. That has a lot more content, since most C constructs can appear in expressions.

+<JoshTriplett> A series of statements forms a compound statement (STMT_COMPOUND).

+<JoshTriplett> That appears as another struct statement which has a statement_list member.

+<JoshTriplett> A function body consists of a compound statement.

+<JoshTriplett> When you look at a loop body, if or else body, or case body, you'll notice that they just have a struct statement, not a statement_list; they can have multiple statements by using a compound statement.

+<JoshTriplett> Also note that all loops get turned into a single "iterator" statement.

+<JoshTriplett> for, while, and do-while.

+<JoshTriplett> A symbol, then, represents a name in a C file. A symbol might represent a variable, a function, a label, or various other things.

+<JoshTriplett> See symbol.h.

+<JoshTriplett> "struct symbol" represents one symbol.

+<JoshTriplett> As with the various other structures, it has some common data and a union of sub-structures for the parts that differ between different types.

+<JoshTriplett> Most of the interesting bits come in the NS_SYMBOL case.

+<JoshTriplett> Among other things, it has a struct statement for the body of a function (if any), a list of symbols for the arguments, an expression for a variable initializer, and so on.

+<JoshTriplett> Together, struct symbol, struct statement, and struct expression represent most of the abstract syntax tree for C.

+<JoshTriplett> So, that represents most of the "front-end" of Sparse: parsing C and generating that abstract syntax tree.

+<JoshTriplett> That much occurs in pretty much any program using the Sparse frontend.

+<JoshTriplett> The backend varies among programs.

+<JoshTriplett> For instance, the c2xml backend goes that far, then outputs XML.

+<JoshTriplett> The sparse static analysis backend has a few steps: it generates linearized bytecode, does some evaluation on that, and outputs some warnings.

+<JoshTriplett> Several other backends run that linearized bytecode stage.

+<JoshTriplett> The linearized bytecode itself has a set of nested structures.

+<JoshTriplett> linearize.h defines all of them.

+<JoshTriplett> At the top level, it has struct entrypoint.

+<JoshTriplett> That represents an entrypoint to the code, which would normally mean a function.

+<JoshTriplett> An entrypoint has a list of basic blocks.

+<JoshTriplett> struct basic_block.

+<JoshTriplett> A basic block represents a series of instructions with no branches.

+<JoshTriplett> Straight-line code.

+<JoshTriplett> A branch only occurs at the end of a basic block, and branches can only target the beginning of a basic block.

+<JoshTriplett> Typically, a conditional will consist of a basic block leading up to the branch, a basic block for the true case, a basic block for the false case, and a basic block where the two paths merge back together.

+<JoshTriplett> Either the true or the false case may not exist.

+<JoshTriplett> A loop will normally have a basic block for the loop body, which can branch to the top at the end or continue to the next basic block.

+<JoshTriplett> So basic blocks represent a node in the control flow graph.

+<JoshTriplett> The edges in that graph lead from one basic block to a basic block which can follow it in the execution of the program.

+<JoshTriplett> Each basic block has a series of instructions, "struct instruction".

+<JoshTriplett> "enum opcode" lists all the instructions.

+<JoshTriplett> Fairly high-level instruction set, corresponding directly to bits of C.

+<JoshTriplett> So you have an entrypoint, which has a graph of basic blocks, each of which has a list of instructions.

+<JoshTriplett> An entrypoint also has a pointer to the first instruction.

+<JoshTriplett> One last bit of trickiness: struct pseudo.

+<JoshTriplett> Have you ever heard of "static single assignment" or SSA form?

+<JoshTriplett> struct pseudo represents one of those single-assignment variables.

+<JoshTriplett> Each one has a pointer to the symbol it represents (which may have many pseudos referencing it).

+<JoshTriplett> Each one also has a pointer to the instruction that defines it.

+<JoshTriplett> That covers most of the major data structures in Sparse.

+<JoshTriplett> Now, given all that, some of the top-level stuff in sparse.c may make more sense.

+<JoshTriplett> For instance, the context checking works in terms of basic blocks.

+<JoshTriplett> Hopefully some of that helped you understand Sparse better.

+