I guess this is a nice application for regular expressions in Perl.

Say, I would like to know how many times in a whole source code (consisting of hundreds of C++ source and header files) a function "foo" is called in a nested manner. (Nested is important here.) So, I am looking for statements like: 

foo(...foo(...)...) ...

[download]

or 

foo(...
   ...foo(...)...) ...

[download]

but not 

foo(...) ... foo(...).

[download]

The statement in the source code might span over multiple code lines (like in the 2nd example). So, somehow the regexp must look across multiple lines. I think this might be the tricky part of the task. C++ is has not a regular syntax. However, it can be assumed that there is no preprocessor directive in the middle of a statement, and (of course since its legal C++) the statement is terminated with a semicolon.

How would one do this? Maybe split the task into 2 separate ones. Like: First transform the code into code with 1 statement per line, then look for nested calls in this transformed code...?!?

In reply to How to find nested calls of a specific function in C++ source and header files? by fwinter

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.