🚀 go-pugleaf

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> writes:

> On Thu, 01 Mar 2018 06:24:33 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>
>> Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2018-03-01, John Levine wrote:
>>>> In article <slrnp9e76p.eu5.grahn+nntp@frailea.sa.invalid>,
>>>> Jorgen Grahn  <grahn...@snipabacken.se> wrote:
>>>>> That too, but I'm personally more interested in the time frame when
>>>>> tools I use today were created: the Unix shells, C compilers,
>>>>> vi/Emacs, troff ...
>>>> 
>>>> I was writing C programs on Unix by late 1975 and I don't ever
>>>> remember using a program to do variable crossrers.
>>> 
>>> (Note that I didn't mention such tools.)
>>> 
>>>> Whatever it needed to do, grep was good enough, or the tag schemes
>>>> later written for emacs and vi.
>>> 
>>> That's what I still do, 40 years later :-) Tags don't work too well
>>> with C++ (since you can have a dozen different functions called foo)
>>> but they /kind of/ work, and no better alternative has shown up as far
>>> as I'm concerned.
>>> 
>>> I don't think I've seen anyone use cxref, ever.  I once saw a guy use
>>> cscope, but that was just once, and I was too lazy to try it out.
>>> 
>>>> Before that I did use the PDP-10 MACRO-10 cref program from time to
>>>> time, even though we had text editors that had some sort of string
>>>> search.
>>> 
>>> /Jorgen
>>> 
>>> 
>> The thing is, the compiler already has all that information, all nicely
>> organized. It's trivial to generate the output. The only way to get a
>> proper xref is by using a program that recognizes variable scope and
>> storage class - although it's *bad* form, I think in C you can have an
>> extern or static variable foo and also use different local foo's in a
>> bunch of functions. If you have a program that does enough syntax
>> analysis to determine this you have the front half of a compiler.
>
> A lot of the cross reference programs I've come across use the front half 
> of the compiler. But overall they are smaller, and a different tool.

IBM's mainframe C compiler can produce a cross reference.
I had a LOT of experience with the compiler and I can't remember
putting the cross reference to use.

-- 
Dan Espen