Macro-Expansion.html 12 KB

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  38. <span id="Macro-Expansion"></span><div class="header">
  39. <p>
  40. Next: <a href="Token-Spacing.html" accesskey="n" rel="next">Token Spacing</a>, Previous: <a href="Hash-Nodes.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Hash Nodes</a>, Up: <a href="index.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
  41. </div>
  42. <hr>
  43. <span id="Macro-Expansion-Algorithm"></span><h2 class="unnumbered">Macro Expansion Algorithm</h2>
  44. <span id="index-macro-expansion"></span>
  45. <p>Macro expansion is a tricky operation, fraught with nasty corner cases
  46. and situations that render what you thought was a nifty way to
  47. optimize the preprocessor&rsquo;s expansion algorithm wrong in quite subtle
  48. ways.
  49. </p>
  50. <p>I strongly recommend you have a good grasp of how the C and C++
  51. standards require macros to be expanded before diving into this
  52. section, let alone the code!. If you don&rsquo;t have a clear mental
  53. picture of how things like nested macro expansion, stringizing and
  54. token pasting are supposed to work, damage to your sanity can quickly
  55. result.
  56. </p>
  57. <span id="Internal-representation-of-macros"></span><h3 class="section">Internal representation of macros</h3>
  58. <span id="index-macro-representation-_0028internal_0029"></span>
  59. <p>The preprocessor stores macro expansions in tokenized form. This
  60. saves repeated lexing passes during expansion, at the cost of a small
  61. increase in memory consumption on average. The tokens are stored
  62. contiguously in memory, so a pointer to the first one and a token
  63. count is all you need to get the replacement list of a macro.
  64. </p>
  65. <p>If the macro is a function-like macro the preprocessor also stores its
  66. parameters, in the form of an ordered list of pointers to the hash
  67. table entry of each parameter&rsquo;s identifier. Further, in the macro&rsquo;s
  68. stored expansion each occurrence of a parameter is replaced with a
  69. special token of type <code>CPP_MACRO_ARG</code>. Each such token holds the
  70. index of the parameter it represents in the parameter list, which
  71. allows rapid replacement of parameters with their arguments during
  72. expansion. Despite this optimization it is still necessary to store
  73. the original parameters to the macro, both for dumping with e.g.,
  74. <samp>-dD</samp>, and to warn about non-trivial macro redefinitions when
  75. the parameter names have changed.
  76. </p>
  77. <span id="Macro-expansion-overview"></span><h3 class="section">Macro expansion overview</h3>
  78. <p>The preprocessor maintains a <em>context stack</em>, implemented as a
  79. linked list of <code>cpp_context</code> structures, which together represent
  80. the macro expansion state at any one time. The <code>struct
  81. cpp_reader</code> member variable <code>context</code> points to the current top
  82. of this stack. The top normally holds the unexpanded replacement list
  83. of the innermost macro under expansion, except when cpplib is about to
  84. pre-expand an argument, in which case it holds that argument&rsquo;s
  85. unexpanded tokens.
  86. </p>
  87. <p>When there are no macros under expansion, cpplib is in <em>base
  88. context</em>. All contexts other than the base context contain a
  89. contiguous list of tokens delimited by a starting and ending token.
  90. When not in base context, cpplib obtains the next token from the list
  91. of the top context. If there are no tokens left in the list, it pops
  92. that context off the stack, and subsequent ones if necessary, until an
  93. unexhausted context is found or it returns to base context. In base
  94. context, cpplib reads tokens directly from the lexer.
  95. </p>
  96. <p>If it encounters an identifier that is both a macro and enabled for
  97. expansion, cpplib prepares to push a new context for that macro on the
  98. stack by calling the routine <code>enter_macro_context</code>. When this
  99. routine returns, the new context will contain the unexpanded tokens of
  100. the replacement list of that macro. In the case of function-like
  101. macros, <code>enter_macro_context</code> also replaces any parameters in the
  102. replacement list, stored as <code>CPP_MACRO_ARG</code> tokens, with the
  103. appropriate macro argument. If the standard requires that the
  104. parameter be replaced with its expanded argument, the argument will
  105. have been fully macro expanded first.
  106. </p>
  107. <p><code>enter_macro_context</code> also handles special macros like
  108. <code>__LINE__</code>. Although these macros expand to a single token which
  109. cannot contain any further macros, for reasons of token spacing
  110. (see <a href="Token-Spacing.html">Token Spacing</a>) and simplicity of implementation, cpplib
  111. handles these special macros by pushing a context containing just that
  112. one token.
  113. </p>
  114. <p>The final thing that <code>enter_macro_context</code> does before returning
  115. is to mark the macro disabled for expansion (except for special macros
  116. like <code>__TIME__</code>). The macro is re-enabled when its context is
  117. later popped from the context stack, as described above. This strict
  118. ordering ensures that a macro is disabled whilst its expansion is
  119. being scanned, but that it is <em>not</em> disabled whilst any arguments
  120. to it are being expanded.
  121. </p>
  122. <span id="Scanning-the-replacement-list-for-macros-to-expand"></span><h3 class="section">Scanning the replacement list for macros to expand</h3>
  123. <p>The C standard states that, after any parameters have been replaced
  124. with their possibly-expanded arguments, the replacement list is
  125. scanned for nested macros. Further, any identifiers in the
  126. replacement list that are not expanded during this scan are never
  127. again eligible for expansion in the future, if the reason they were
  128. not expanded is that the macro in question was disabled.
  129. </p>
  130. <p>Clearly this latter condition can only apply to tokens resulting from
  131. argument pre-expansion. Other tokens never have an opportunity to be
  132. re-tested for expansion. It is possible for identifiers that are
  133. function-like macros to not expand initially but to expand during a
  134. later scan. This occurs when the identifier is the last token of an
  135. argument (and therefore originally followed by a comma or a closing
  136. parenthesis in its macro&rsquo;s argument list), and when it replaces its
  137. parameter in the macro&rsquo;s replacement list, the subsequent token
  138. happens to be an opening parenthesis (itself possibly the first token
  139. of an argument).
  140. </p>
  141. <p>It is important to note that when cpplib reads the last token of a
  142. given context, that context still remains on the stack. Only when
  143. looking for the <em>next</em> token do we pop it off the stack and drop
  144. to a lower context. This makes backing up by one token easy, but more
  145. importantly ensures that the macro corresponding to the current
  146. context is still disabled when we are considering the last token of
  147. its replacement list for expansion (or indeed expanding it). As an
  148. example, which illustrates many of the points above, consider
  149. </p>
  150. <div class="example">
  151. <pre class="example">#define foo(x) bar x
  152. foo(foo) (2)
  153. </pre></div>
  154. <p>which fully expands to &lsquo;<samp>bar foo (2)</samp>&rsquo;. During pre-expansion
  155. of the argument, &lsquo;<samp>foo</samp>&rsquo; does not expand even though the macro is
  156. enabled, since it has no following parenthesis [pre-expansion of an
  157. argument only uses tokens from that argument; it cannot take tokens
  158. from whatever follows the macro invocation]. This still leaves the
  159. argument token &lsquo;<samp>foo</samp>&rsquo; eligible for future expansion. Then, when
  160. re-scanning after argument replacement, the token &lsquo;<samp>foo</samp>&rsquo; is
  161. rejected for expansion, and marked ineligible for future expansion,
  162. since the macro is now disabled. It is disabled because the
  163. replacement list &lsquo;<samp>bar foo</samp>&rsquo; of the macro is still on the context
  164. stack.
  165. </p>
  166. <p>If instead the algorithm looked for an opening parenthesis first and
  167. then tested whether the macro were disabled it would be subtly wrong.
  168. In the example above, the replacement list of &lsquo;<samp>foo</samp>&rsquo; would be
  169. popped in the process of finding the parenthesis, re-enabling
  170. &lsquo;<samp>foo</samp>&rsquo; and expanding it a second time.
  171. </p>
  172. <span id="Looking-for-a-function_002dlike-macro_0027s-opening-parenthesis"></span><h3 class="section">Looking for a function-like macro&rsquo;s opening parenthesis</h3>
  173. <p>Function-like macros only expand when immediately followed by a
  174. parenthesis. To do this cpplib needs to temporarily disable macros
  175. and read the next token. Unfortunately, because of spacing issues
  176. (see <a href="Token-Spacing.html">Token Spacing</a>), there can be fake padding tokens in-between,
  177. and if the next real token is not a parenthesis cpplib needs to be
  178. able to back up that one token as well as retain the information in
  179. any intervening padding tokens.
  180. </p>
  181. <p>Backing up more than one token when macros are involved is not
  182. permitted by cpplib, because in general it might involve issues like
  183. restoring popped contexts onto the context stack, which are too hard.
  184. Instead, searching for the parenthesis is handled by a special
  185. function, <code>funlike_invocation_p</code>, which remembers padding
  186. information as it reads tokens. If the next real token is not an
  187. opening parenthesis, it backs up that one token, and then pushes an
  188. extra context just containing the padding information if necessary.
  189. </p>
  190. <span id="Marking-tokens-ineligible-for-future-expansion"></span><h3 class="section">Marking tokens ineligible for future expansion</h3>
  191. <p>As discussed above, cpplib needs a way of marking tokens as
  192. unexpandable. Since the tokens cpplib handles are read-only once they
  193. have been lexed, it instead makes a copy of the token and adds the
  194. flag <code>NO_EXPAND</code> to the copy.
  195. </p>
  196. <p>For efficiency and to simplify memory management by avoiding having to
  197. remember to free these tokens, they are allocated as temporary tokens
  198. from the lexer&rsquo;s current token run (see <a href="Lexer.html#Lexing-a-line">Lexing a line</a>) using the
  199. function <code>_cpp_temp_token</code>. The tokens are then re-used once the
  200. current line of tokens has been read in.
  201. </p>
  202. <p>This might sound unsafe. However, tokens runs are not re-used at the
  203. end of a line if it happens to be in the middle of a macro argument
  204. list, and cpplib only wants to back-up more than one lexer token in
  205. situations where no macro expansion is involved, so the optimization
  206. is safe.
  207. </p>
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