Member Avatar for Buffalo101

Hello,

I want to code an application that calculates a program's complexity. I may have put this the wrong way: I want to count the operators, variables, function calls etc. in a C/C++ program.

At first I thought about reading the .C file as a .txt file, looping through each character and counting a symbol's appearance: ";" 10 times, "." 2 times, "^" 1 time, printf 3 times etc.

However, if someone uses #include <math.h>, I need to count the number of calls to math functions and so on.

What I need to do is obtain the names of functions included in a header and check for their calls. How to do that? Or any other ideas ?


LE: I'd also have to check for user defined functions. This might not be so doable as I originally thought. :D

Edited by Buffalo101 because: n/a
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Member Avatar for Momerath

You'll need to perform a Lexical analysis of the code. Your software will need to 'understand' that something like // This is a test of the sprintf() function ... doesn't have a function call, isn't using . operators, etc.

This might help.

Member Avatar for Buffalo101

Thanks for the reply.

I am going to postpone this until my "Designing Compilers" class next year.

Member Avatar for Buffalo101

I've recently learned about regular expressions. Seems promising and suitable for my case.

If anyone has experience with this, please post; I'll update my progress.

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