PERLHACK(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLHACK(1)
NAME
perlhack - How to hack at the Perl internals
DESCRIPTION
This document attempts to explain how Perl development takes place, and ends with some suggestions for people wanting to become bona fide
porters.
The perl5-porters mailing list is where the Perl standard distribution is maintained and developed. The list can get anywhere from 10 to
150 messages a day, depending on the heatedness of the debate. Most days there are two or three patches, extensions, features, or bugs
being discussed at a time.
A searchable archive of the list is at either:
http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/
or
http://archive.develooper.com/perl5-porters@perl.org/
List subscribers (the porters themselves) come in several flavours. Some are quiet curious lurkers, who rarely pitch in and instead watch
the ongoing development to ensure they're forewarned of new changes or features in Perl. Some are representatives of vendors, who are
there to make sure that Perl continues to compile and work on their platforms. Some patch any reported bug that they know how to fix, some
are actively patching their pet area (threads, Win32, the regexp engine), while others seem to do nothing but complain. In other words,
it's your usual mix of technical people.
Over this group of porters presides Larry Wall. He has the final word in what does and does not change in the Perl language. Various
releases of Perl are shepherded by a "pumpking", a porter responsible for gathering patches, deciding on a patch-by-patch, feature-by-fea-
ture basis what will and will not go into the release. For instance, Gurusamy Sarathy was the pumpking for the 5.6 release of Perl, and
Jarkko Hietaniemi was the pumpking for the 5.8 release, and Rafael Garcia-Suarez holds the pumpking crown for the 5.10 release.
In addition, various people are pumpkings for different things. For instance, Andy Dougherty and Jarkko Hietaniemi did a grand job as the
Configure pumpkin up till the 5.8 release. For the 5.10 release H.Merijn Brand took over.
Larry sees Perl development along the lines of the US government: there's the Legislature (the porters), the Executive branch (the pump-
kings), and the Supreme Court (Larry). The legislature can discuss and submit patches to the executive branch all they like, but the exec-
utive branch is free to veto them. Rarely, the Supreme Court will side with the executive branch over the legislature, or the legislature
over the executive branch. Mostly, however, the legislature and the executive branch are supposed to get along and work out their differ-
ences without impeachment or court cases.
You might sometimes see reference to Rule 1 and Rule 2. Larry's power as Supreme Court is expressed in The Rules:
1 Larry is always by definition right about how Perl should behave. This means he has final veto power on the core functionality.
2 Larry is allowed to change his mind about any matter at a later date, regardless of whether he previously invoked Rule 1.
Got that? Larry is always right, even when he was wrong. It's rare to see either Rule exercised, but they are often alluded to.
New features and extensions to the language are contentious, because the criteria used by the pumpkings, Larry, and other porters to decide
which features should be implemented and incorporated are not codified in a few small design goals as with some other languages. Instead,
the heuristics are flexible and often difficult to fathom. Here is one person's list, roughly in decreasing order of importance, of
heuristics that new features have to be weighed against:
Does concept match the general goals of Perl?
These haven't been written anywhere in stone, but one approximation is:
1. Keep it fast, simple, and useful.
2. Keep features/concepts as orthogonal as possible.
3. No arbitrary limits (platforms, data sizes, cultures).
4. Keep it open and exciting to use/patch/advocate Perl everywhere.
5. Either assimilate new technologies, or build bridges to them.
Where is the implementation?
All the talk in the world is useless without an implementation. In almost every case, the person or people who argue for a new feature
will be expected to be the ones who implement it. Porters capable of coding new features have their own agendas, and are not available
to implement your (possibly good) idea.
Backwards compatibility
It's a cardinal sin to break existing Perl programs. New warnings are contentious--some say that a program that emits warnings is not
broken, while others say it is. Adding keywords has the potential to break programs, changing the meaning of existing token sequences
or functions might break programs.
Could it be a module instead?
Perl 5 has extension mechanisms, modules and XS, specifically to avoid the need to keep changing the Perl interpreter. You can write
modules that export functions, you can give those functions prototypes so they can be called like built-in functions, you can even
write XS code to mess with the runtime data structures of the Perl interpreter if you want to implement really complicated things. If
it can be done in a module instead of in the core, it's highly unlikely to be added.
Is the feature generic enough?
Is this something that only the submitter wants added to the language, or would it be broadly useful? Sometimes, instead of adding a
feature with a tight focus, the porters might decide to wait until someone implements the more generalized feature. For instance,
instead of implementing a "delayed evaluation" feature, the porters are waiting for a macro system that would permit delayed evaluation
and much more.
Does it potentially introduce new bugs?
Radical rewrites of large chunks of the Perl interpreter have the potential to introduce new bugs. The smaller and more localized the
change, the better.
Does it preclude other desirable features?
A patch is likely to be rejected if it closes off future avenues of development. For instance, a patch that placed a true and final
interpretation on prototypes is likely to be rejected because there are still options for the future of prototypes that haven't been
addressed.
Is the implementation robust?
Good patches (tight code, complete, correct) stand more chance of going in. Sloppy or incorrect patches might be placed on the back
burner until the pumpking has time to fix, or might be discarded altogether without further notice.
Is the implementation generic enough to be portable?
The worst patches make use of a system-specific features. It's highly unlikely that non-portable additions to the Perl language will
be accepted.
Is the implementation tested?
Patches which change behaviour (fixing bugs or introducing new features) must include regression tests to verify that everything works
as expected. Without tests provided by the original author, how can anyone else changing perl in the future be sure that they haven't
unwittingly broken the behaviour the patch implements? And without tests, how can the patch's author be confident that his/her hard
work put into the patch won't be accidentally thrown away by someone in the future?
Is there enough documentation?
Patches without documentation are probably ill-thought out or incomplete. Nothing can be added without documentation, so submitting a
patch for the appropriate manpages as well as the source code is always a good idea.
Is there another way to do it?
Larry said "Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something". This is a
tricky heuristic to navigate, though--one man's essential addition is another man's pointless cruft.
Does it create too much work?
Work for the pumpking, work for Perl programmers, work for module authors, ... Perl is supposed to be easy.
Patches speak louder than words
Working code is always preferred to pie-in-the-sky ideas. A patch to add a feature stands a much higher chance of making it to the
language than does a random feature request, no matter how fervently argued the request might be. This ties into "Will it be useful?",
as the fact that someone took the time to make the patch demonstrates a strong desire for the feature.
If you're on the list, you might hear the word "core" bandied around. It refers to the standard distribution. "Hacking on the core" means
you're changing the C source code to the Perl interpreter. "A core module" is one that ships with Perl.
Keeping in sync
The source code to the Perl interpreter, in its different versions, is kept in a repository managed by a revision control system ( which is
currently the Perforce program, see http://perforce.com/ ). The pumpkings and a few others have access to the repository to check in
changes. Periodically the pumpking for the development version of Perl will release a new version, so the rest of the porters can see
what's changed. The current state of the main trunk of repository, and patches that describe the individual changes that have happened
since the last public release are available at this location:
http://public.activestate.com/pub/apc/
ftp://public.activestate.com/pub/apc/
If you're looking for a particular change, or a change that affected a particular set of files, you may find the Perl Repository Browser
useful:
http://public.activestate.com/cgi-bin/perlbrowse
You may also want to subscribe to the perl5-changes mailing list to receive a copy of each patch that gets submitted to the maintenance and
development "branches" of the perl repository. See http://lists.perl.org/ for subscription information.
If you are a member of the perl5-porters mailing list, it is a good thing to keep in touch with the most recent changes. If not only to
verify if what you would have posted as a bug report isn't already solved in the most recent available perl development branch, also known
as perl-current, bleading edge perl, bleedperl or bleadperl.
Needless to say, the source code in perl-current is usually in a perpetual state of evolution. You should expect it to be very buggy. Do
not use it for any purpose other than testing and development.
Keeping in sync with the most recent branch can be done in several ways, but the most convenient and reliable way is using rsync, available
at ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync/ . (You can also get the most recent branch by FTP.)
If you choose to keep in sync using rsync, there are two approaches to doing so:
rsync'ing the source tree
Presuming you are in the directory where your perl source resides and you have rsync installed and available, you can "upgrade" to the
bleadperl using:
# rsync -avz rsync://public.activestate.com/perl-current/ .
This takes care of updating every single item in the source tree to the latest applied patch level, creating files that are new (to
your distribution) and setting date/time stamps of existing files to reflect the bleadperl status.
Note that this will not delete any files that were in '.' before the rsync. Once you are sure that the rsync is running correctly, run
it with the --delete and the --dry-run options like this:
# rsync -avz --delete --dry-run rsync://public.activestate.com/perl-current/ .
This will simulate an rsync run that also deletes files not present in the bleadperl master copy. Observe the results from this run
closely. If you are sure that the actual run would delete no files precious to you, you could remove the '--dry-run' option.
You can than check what patch was the latest that was applied by looking in the file .patch, which will show the number of the latest
patch.
If you have more than one machine to keep in sync, and not all of them have access to the WAN (so you are not able to rsync all the
source trees to the real source), there are some ways to get around this problem.
Using rsync over the LAN
Set up a local rsync server which makes the rsynced source tree available to the LAN and sync the other machines against this
directory.
From http://rsync.samba.org/README.html :
"Rsync uses rsh or ssh for communication. It does not need to be
setuid and requires no special privileges for installation. It
does not require an inetd entry or a daemon. You must, however,
have a working rsh or ssh system. Using ssh is recommended for
its security features."
Using pushing over the NFS
Having the other systems mounted over the NFS, you can take an active pushing approach by checking the just updated tree against
the other not-yet synced trees. An example would be
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use File::Copy;
my %MF = map {
m/(S+)/;
$1 => [ (stat $1)[2, 7, 9] ]; # mode, size, mtime
} `cat MANIFEST`;
my %remote = map { $_ => "/$_/pro/3gl/CPAN/perl-5.7.1" } qw(host1 host2);
foreach my $host (keys %remote) {
unless (-d $remote{$host}) {
print STDERR "Cannot Xsync for host $host
";
next;
}
foreach my $file (keys %MF) {
my $rfile = "$remote{$host}/$file";
my ($mode, $size, $mtime) = (stat $rfile)[2, 7, 9];
defined $size or ($mode, $size, $mtime) = (0, 0, 0);
$size == $MF{$file}[1] && $mtime == $MF{$file}[2] and next;
printf "%4s %-34s %8d %9d %8d %9d
",
$host, $file, $MF{$file}[1], $MF{$file}[2], $size, $mtime;
unlink $rfile;
copy ($file, $rfile);
utime time, $MF{$file}[2], $rfile;
chmod $MF{$file}[0], $rfile;
}
}
though this is not perfect. It could be improved with checking file checksums before updating. Not all NFS systems support reliable
utime support (when used over the NFS).
rsync'ing the patches
The source tree is maintained by the pumpking who applies patches to the files in the tree. These patches are either created by the
pumpking himself using "diff -c" after updating the file manually or by applying patches sent in by posters on the perl5-porters list.
These patches are also saved and rsync'able, so you can apply them yourself to the source files.
Presuming you are in a directory where your patches reside, you can get them in sync with
# rsync -avz rsync://public.activestate.com/perl-current-diffs/ .
This makes sure the latest available patch is downloaded to your patch directory.
It's then up to you to apply these patches, using something like
# last="`cat ../perl-current/.patch`.gz"
# rsync -avz rsync://public.activestate.com/perl-current-diffs/ .
# find . -name '*.gz' -newer $last -exec gzcat {} ; >blead.patch
# cd ../perl-current
# patch -p1 -N <../perl-current-diffs/blead.patch
or, since this is only a hint towards how it works, use CPAN-patchaperl from Andreas Konig to have better control over the patching
process.
Why rsync the source tree
It's easier to rsync the source tree
Since you don't have to apply the patches yourself, you are sure all files in the source tree are in the right state.
It's more reliable
While both the rsync-able source and patch areas are automatically updated every few minutes, keep in mind that applying patches may
sometimes mean careful hand-holding, especially if your version of the "patch" program does not understand how to deal with new files,
files with 8-bit characters, or files without trailing newlines.
Why rsync the patches
It's easier to rsync the patches
If you have more than one machine that you want to keep in track with bleadperl, it's easier to rsync the patches only once and then
apply them to all the source trees on the different machines.
In case you try to keep in pace on 5 different machines, for which only one of them has access to the WAN, rsync'ing all the source
trees should than be done 5 times over the NFS. Having rsync'ed the patches only once, I can apply them to all the source trees auto-
matically. Need you say more ;-)
It's a good reference
If you do not only like to have the most recent development branch, but also like to fix bugs, or extend features, you want to dive
into the sources. If you are a seasoned perl core diver, you don't need no manuals, tips, roadmaps, perlguts.pod or other aids to find
your way around. But if you are a starter, the patches may help you in finding where you should start and how to change the bits that
bug you.
The file Changes is updated on occasions the pumpking sees as his own little sync points. On those occasions, he releases a tar-ball of
the current source tree (i.e. perl@7582.tar.gz), which will be an excellent point to start with when choosing to use the 'rsync the
patches' scheme. Starting with perl@7582, which means a set of source files on which the latest applied patch is number 7582, you apply
all succeeding patches available from then on (7583, 7584, ...).
You can use the patches later as a kind of search archive.
Finding a start point
If you want to fix/change the behaviour of function/feature Foo, just scan the patches for patches that mention Foo either in the
subject, the comments, or the body of the fix. A good chance the patch shows you the files that are affected by that patch which
are very likely to be the starting point of your journey into the guts of perl.
Finding how to fix a bug
If you've found where the function/feature Foo misbehaves, but you don't know how to fix it (but you do know the change you want to
make), you can, again, peruse the patches for similar changes and look how others apply the fix.
Finding the source of misbehaviour
When you keep in sync with bleadperl, the pumpking would love to see that the community efforts really work. So after each of his
sync points, you are to 'make test' to check if everything is still in working order. If it is, you do 'make ok', which will send
an OK report to perlbug@perl.org. (If you do not have access to a mailer from the system you just finished successfully 'make
test', you can do 'make okfile', which creates the file "perl.ok", which you can than take to your favourite mailer and mail your-
self).
But of course, as always, things will not always lead to a success path, and one or more test do not pass the 'make test'. Before
sending in a bug report (using 'make nok' or 'make nokfile'), check the mailing list if someone else has reported the bug already
and if so, confirm it by replying to that message. If not, you might want to trace the source of that misbehaviour before sending
in the bug, which will help all the other porters in finding the solution.
Here the saved patches come in very handy. You can check the list of patches to see which patch changed what file and what change
caused the misbehaviour. If you note that in the bug report, it saves the one trying to solve it, looking for that point.
If searching the patches is too bothersome, you might consider using perl's bugtron to find more information about discussions and ram-
blings on posted bugs.
If you want to get the best of both worlds, rsync both the source tree for convenience, reliability and ease and rsync the patches for
reference.
Working with the source
Because you cannot use the Perforce client, you cannot easily generate diffs against the repository, nor will merges occur when you update
via rsync. If you edit a file locally and then rsync against the latest source, changes made in the remote copy will overwrite your local
versions!
The best way to deal with this is to maintain a tree of symlinks to the rsync'd source. Then, when you want to edit a file, you remove the
symlink, copy the real file into the other tree, and edit it. You can then diff your edited file against the original to generate a patch,
and you can safely update the original tree.
Perl's Configure script can generate this tree of symlinks for you. The following example assumes that you have used rsync to pull a copy
of the Perl source into the perl-rsync directory. In the directory above that one, you can execute the following commands:
mkdir perl-dev
cd perl-dev
../perl-rsync/Configure -Dmksymlinks -Dusedevel -D"optimize=-g"
This will start the Perl configuration process. After a few prompts, you should see something like this:
Symbolic links are supported.
Checking how to test for symbolic links...
Your builtin 'test -h' may be broken.
Trying external '/usr/bin/test -h'.
You can test for symbolic links with '/usr/bin/test -h'.
Creating the symbolic links...
(First creating the subdirectories...)
(Then creating the symlinks...)
The specifics may vary based on your operating system, of course. After you see this, you can abort the Configure script, and you will see
that the directory you are in has a tree of symlinks to the perl-rsync directories and files.
If you plan to do a lot of work with the Perl source, here are some Bourne shell script functions that can make your life easier:
function edit {
if [ -L $1 ]; then
mv $1 $1.orig
cp $1.orig $1
vi $1
else
vi $1
fi
}
function unedit {
if [ -L $1.orig ]; then
rm $1
mv $1.orig $1
fi
}
Replace "vi" with your favorite flavor of editor.
Here is another function which will quickly generate a patch for the files which have been edited in your symlink tree:
mkpatchorig() {
local diffopts
for f in `find . -name '*.orig' | sed s,^./,,`
do
case `echo $f | sed 's,.orig$,,;s,.*.,,'` in
c) diffopts=-p ;;
pod) diffopts='-F^=' ;;
*) diffopts= ;;
esac
diff -du $diffopts $f `echo $f | sed 's,.orig$,,'`
done
}
This function produces patches which include enough context to make your changes obvious. This makes it easier for the Perl pumpking(s) to
review them when you send them to the perl5-porters list, and that means they're more likely to get applied.
This function assumed a GNU diff, and may require some tweaking for other diff variants.
Perlbug administration
There is a single remote administrative interface for modifying bug status, category, open issues etc. using the RT bugtracker system,
maintained by Robert Spier. Become an administrator, and close any bugs you can get your sticky mitts on:
http://bugs.perl.org/
To email the bug system administrators:
"perlbug-admin" <perlbug-admin@perl.org>
Submitting patches
Always submit patches to perl5-porters@perl.org. If you're patching a core module and there's an author listed, send the author a copy
(see "Patching a core module"). This lets other porters review your patch, which catches a surprising number of errors in patches. Either
use the diff program (available in source code form from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ , or use Johan Vromans' makepatch (available from
CPAN/authors/id/JV/). Unified diffs are preferred, but context diffs are accepted. Do not send RCS-style diffs or diffs without context
lines. More information is given in the Porting/patching.pod file in the Perl source distribution. Please patch against the latest devel-
opment version. (e.g., even if you're fixing a bug in the 5.8 track, patch against the latest development version rsynced from rsync://pub-
lic.activestate.com/perl-current/ )
If changes are accepted, they are applied to the development branch. Then the 5.8 pumpking decides which of those patches is to be back-
ported to the maint branch. Only patches that survive the heat of the development branch get applied to maintenance versions.
Your patch should update the documentation and test suite. See "Writing a test". If you have added or removed files in the distribution,
edit the MANIFEST file accordingly, sort the MANIFEST file using "make manisort", and include those changes as part of your patch.
Patching documentation also follows the same order: if accepted, a patch is first applied to development, and if relevant then it's back-
ported to maintenance. (With an exception for some patches that document behaviour that only appears in the maintenance branch, but which
has changed in the development version.)
To report a bug in Perl, use the program perlbug which comes with Perl (if you can't get Perl to work, send mail to the address perl-
bug@perl.org or perlbug@perl.com). Reporting bugs through perlbug feeds into the automated bug-tracking system, access to which is pro-
vided through the web at http://rt.perl.org/rt3/ . It often pays to check the archives of the perl5-porters mailing list to see whether
the bug you're reporting has been reported before, and if so whether it was considered a bug. See above for the location of the searchable
archives.
The CPAN testers ( http://testers.cpan.org/ ) are a group of volunteers who test CPAN modules on a variety of platforms. Perl Smokers (
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.daily-build and http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.daily-build.reports/ ) automatically test Perl
source releases on platforms with various configurations. Both efforts welcome volunteers. In order to get involved in smoke testing of
the perl itself visit <http://search.cpan.org/dist/Test-Smoke>. In order to start smoke testing CPAN modules visit
<http://search.cpan.org/dist/CPAN-YACSmoke/> or <http://search.cpan.org/dist/POE-Component-CPAN-YACSmoke/> or
<http://search.cpan.org/dist/CPAN-Reporter/>.
It's a good idea to read and lurk for a while before chipping in. That way you'll get to see the dynamic of the conversations, learn the
personalities of the players, and hopefully be better prepared to make a useful contribution when do you speak up.
If after all this you still think you want to join the perl5-porters mailing list, send mail to perl5-porters-subscribe@perl.org. To
unsubscribe, send mail to perl5-porters-unsubscribe@perl.org.
To hack on the Perl guts, you'll need to read the following things:
perlguts
This is of paramount importance, since it's the documentation of what goes where in the Perl source. Read it over a couple of times and
it might start to make sense - don't worry if it doesn't yet, because the best way to study it is to read it in conjunction with poking
at Perl source, and we'll do that later on.
You might also want to look at Gisle Aas's illustrated perlguts - there's no guarantee that this will be absolutely up-to-date with the
latest documentation in the Perl core, but the fundamentals will be right. ( http://gisle.aas.no/perl/illguts/ )
perlxstut and perlxs
A working knowledge of XSUB programming is incredibly useful for core hacking; XSUBs use techniques drawn from the PP code, the portion
of the guts that actually executes a Perl program. It's a lot gentler to learn those techniques from simple examples and explanation
than from the core itself.
perlapi
The documentation for the Perl API explains what some of the internal functions do, as well as the many macros used in the source.
Porting/pumpkin.pod
This is a collection of words of wisdom for a Perl porter; some of it is only useful to the pumpkin holder, but most of it applies to
anyone wanting to go about Perl development.
The perl5-porters FAQ
This should be available from http://dev.perl.org/perl5/docs/p5p-faq.html . It contains hints on reading perl5-porters, information on
how perl5-porters works and how Perl development in general works.
Finding Your Way Around
Perl maintenance can be split into a number of areas, and certain people (pumpkins) will have responsibility for each area. These areas
sometimes correspond to files or directories in the source kit. Among the areas are:
Core modules
Modules shipped as part of the Perl core live in the lib/ and ext/ subdirectories: lib/ is for the pure-Perl modules, and ext/ contains
the core XS modules.
Tests
There are tests for nearly all the modules, built-ins and major bits of functionality. Test files all have a .t suffix. Module tests
live in the lib/ and ext/ directories next to the module being tested. Others live in t/. See "Writing a test"
Documentation
Documentation maintenance includes looking after everything in the pod/ directory, (as well as contributing new documentation) and the
documentation to the modules in core.
Configure
The configure process is the way we make Perl portable across the myriad of operating systems it supports. Responsibility for the con-
figure, build and installation process, as well as the overall portability of the core code rests with the configure pumpkin - others
help out with individual operating systems.
The files involved are the operating system directories, (win32/, os2/, vms/ and so on) the shell scripts which generate config.h and
Makefile, as well as the metaconfig files which generate Configure. (metaconfig isn't included in the core distribution.)
Interpreter
And of course, there's the core of the Perl interpreter itself. Let's have a look at that in a little more detail.
Before we leave looking at the layout, though, don't forget that MANIFEST contains not only the file names in the Perl distribution, but
short descriptions of what's in them, too. For an overview of the important files, try this:
perl -lne 'print if /^[^/]+.[ch]s+/' MANIFEST
Elements of the interpreter
The work of the interpreter has two main stages: compiling the code into the internal representation, or bytecode, and then executing it.
"Compiled code" in perlguts explains exactly how the compilation stage happens.
Here is a short breakdown of perl's operation:
Startup
The action begins in perlmain.c. (or miniperlmain.c for miniperl) This is very high-level code, enough to fit on a single screen, and it
resembles the code found in perlembed; most of the real action takes place in perl.c
perlmain.c is generated by writemain from miniperlmain.c at make time, so you should make perl to follow this along.
First, perlmain.c allocates some memory and constructs a Perl interpreter, along these lines:
1 PERL_SYS_INIT3(&argc,&argv,&env);
2
3 if (!PL_do_undump) {
4 my_perl = perl_alloc();
5 if (!my_perl)
6 exit(1);
7 perl_construct(my_perl);
8 PL_perl_destruct_level = 0;
9 }
Line 1 is a macro, and its definition is dependent on your operating system. Line 3 references "PL_do_undump", a global variable - all
global variables in Perl start with "PL_". This tells you whether the current running program was created with the "-u" flag to perl and
then undump, which means it's going to be false in any sane context.
Line 4 calls a function in perl.c to allocate memory for a Perl interpreter. It's quite a simple function, and the guts of it looks like
this:
my_perl = (PerlInterpreter*)PerlMem_malloc(sizeof(PerlInterpreter));
Here you see an example of Perl's system abstraction, which we'll see later: "PerlMem_malloc" is either your system's "malloc", or
Perl's own "malloc" as defined in malloc.c if you selected that option at configure time.
Next, in line 7, we construct the interpreter using perl_construct, also in perl.c; this sets up all the special variables that Perl
needs, the stacks, and so on.
Now we pass Perl the command line options, and tell it to go:
exitstatus = perl_parse(my_perl, xs_init, argc, argv, (char **)NULL);
if (!exitstatus)
perl_run(my_perl);
exitstatus = perl_destruct(my_perl);
perl_free(my_perl);
"perl_parse" is actually a wrapper around "S_parse_body", as defined in perl.c, which processes the command line options, sets up any
statically linked XS modules, opens the program and calls "yyparse" to parse it.
Parsing
The aim of this stage is to take the Perl source, and turn it into an op tree. We'll see what one of those looks like later. Strictly
speaking, there's three things going on here.
"yyparse", the parser, lives in perly.c, although you're better off reading the original YACC input in perly.y. (Yes, Virginia, there is
a YACC grammar for Perl!) The job of the parser is to take your code and "understand" it, splitting it into sentences, deciding which
operands go with which operators and so on.
The parser is nobly assisted by the lexer, which chunks up your input into tokens, and decides what type of thing each token is: a vari-
able name, an operator, a bareword, a subroutine, a core function, and so on. The main point of entry to the lexer is "yylex", and that
and its associated routines can be found in toke.c. Perl isn't much like other computer languages; it's highly context sensitive at
times, it can be tricky to work out what sort of token something is, or where a token ends. As such, there's a lot of interplay between
the tokeniser and the parser, which can get pretty frightening if you're not used to it.
As the parser understands a Perl program, it builds up a tree of operations for the interpreter to perform during execution. The rou-
tines which construct and link together the various operations are to be found in op.c, and will be examined later.
Optimization
Now the parsing stage is complete, and the finished tree represents the operations that the Perl interpreter needs to perform to execute
our program. Next, Perl does a dry run over the tree looking for optimisations: constant expressions such as "3 + 4" will be computed
now, and the optimizer will also see if any multiple operations can be replaced with a single one. For instance, to fetch the variable
$foo, instead of grabbing the glob *foo and looking at the scalar component, the optimizer fiddles the op tree to use a function which
directly looks up the scalar in question. The main optimizer is "peep" in op.c, and many ops have their own optimizing functions.
Running
Now we're finally ready to go: we have compiled Perl byte code, and all that's left to do is run it. The actual execution is done by the
"runops_standard" function in run.c; more specifically, it's done by these three innocent looking lines:
while ((PL_op = CALL_FPTR(PL_op->op_ppaddr)(aTHX))) {
PERL_ASYNC_CHECK();
}
You may be more comfortable with the Perl version of that:
PERL_ASYNC_CHECK() while $Perl::op = &{$Perl::op->{function}};
Well, maybe not. Anyway, each op contains a function pointer, which stipulates the function which will actually carry out the operation.
This function will return the next op in the sequence - this allows for things like "if" which choose the next op dynamically at run
time. The "PERL_ASYNC_CHECK" makes sure that things like signals interrupt execution if required.
The actual functions called are known as PP code, and they're spread between four files: pp_hot.c contains the "hot" code, which is most
often used and highly optimized, pp_sys.c contains all the system-specific functions, pp_ctl.c contains the functions which implement
control structures ("if", "while" and the like) and pp.c contains everything else. These are, if you like, the C code for Perl's built-
in functions and operators.
Note that each "pp_" function is expected to return a pointer to the next op. Calls to perl subs (and eval blocks) are handled within
the same runops loop, and do not consume extra space on the C stack. For example, "pp_entersub" and "pp_entertry" just push a "CxSUB" or
"CxEVAL" block struct onto the context stack which contain the address of the op following the sub call or eval. They then return the
first op of that sub or eval block, and so execution continues of that sub or block. Later, a "pp_leavesub" or "pp_leavetry" op pops
the "CxSUB" or "CxEVAL", retrieves the return op from it, and returns it.
Exception handing
Perl's exception handing (i.e. "die" etc.) is built on top of the low-level "setjmp()"/"longjmp()" C-library functions. These basically
provide a way to capture the current PC and SP registers and later restore them; i.e. a "longjmp()" continues at the point in code
where a previous "setjmp()" was done, with anything further up on the C stack being lost. This is why code should always save values
using "SAVE_FOO" rather than in auto variables.
The perl core wraps "setjmp()" etc in the macros "JMPENV_PUSH" and "JMPENV_JUMP". The basic rule of perl exceptions is that "exit", and
"die" (in the absence of "eval") perform a JMPENV_JUMP(2), while "die" within "eval" does a JMPENV_JUMP(3).
At entry points to perl, such as "perl_parse()", "perl_run()" and "call_sv(cv, G_EVAL)" each does a "JMPENV_PUSH", then enter a runops
loop or whatever, and handle possible exception returns. For a 2 return, final cleanup is performed, such as popping stacks and calling
"CHECK" or "END" blocks. Amongst other things, this is how scope cleanup still occurs during an "exit".
If a "die" can find a "CxEVAL" block on the context stack, then the stack is popped to that level and the return op in that block is
assigned to "PL_restartop"; then a JMPENV_JUMP(3) is performed. This normally passes control back to the guard. In the case of
"perl_run" and "call_sv", a non-null "PL_restartop" triggers re-entry to the runops loop. The is the normal way that "die" or "croak" is
handled within an "eval".
Sometimes ops are executed within an inner runops loop, such as tie, sort or overload code. In this case, something like
sub FETCH { eval { die } }
would cause a longjmp right back to the guard in "perl_run", popping both runops loops, which is clearly incorrect. One way to avoid
this is for the tie code to do a "JMPENV_PUSH" before executing "FETCH" in the inner runops loop, but for efficiency reasons, perl in
fact just sets a flag, using "CATCH_SET(TRUE)". The "pp_require", "pp_entereval" and "pp_entertry" ops check this flag, and if true,
they call "docatch", which does a "JMPENV_PUSH" and starts a new runops level to execute the code, rather than doing it on the current
loop.
As a further optimisation, on exit from the eval block in the "FETCH", execution of the code following the block is still carried on in
the inner loop. When an exception is raised, "docatch" compares the "JMPENV" level of the "CxEVAL" with "PL_top_env" and if they dif-
fer, just re-throws the exception. In this way any inner loops get popped.
Here's an example.
1: eval { tie @a, 'A' };
2: sub A::TIEARRAY {
3: eval { die };
4: die;
5: }
To run this code, "perl_run" is called, which does a "JMPENV_PUSH" then enters a runops loop. This loop executes the eval and tie ops on
line 1, with the eval pushing a "CxEVAL" onto the context stack.
The "pp_tie" does a "CATCH_SET(TRUE)", then starts a second runops loop to execute the body of "TIEARRAY". When it executes the entertry
op on line 3, "CATCH_GET" is true, so "pp_entertry" calls "docatch" which does a "JMPENV_PUSH" and starts a third runops loop, which
then executes the die op. At this point the C call stack looks like this:
Perl_pp_die
Perl_runops # third loop
S_docatch_body
S_docatch
Perl_pp_entertry
Perl_runops # second loop
S_call_body
Perl_call_sv
Perl_pp_tie
Perl_runops # first loop
S_run_body
perl_run
main
and the context and data stacks, as shown by "-Dstv", look like:
STACK 0: MAIN
CX 0: BLOCK =>
CX 1: EVAL => AV() PV("A" )
retop=leave
STACK 1: MAGIC
CX 0: SUB =>
retop=(null)
CX 1: EVAL => *
retop=nextstate
The die pops the first "CxEVAL" off the context stack, sets "PL_restartop" from it, does a JMPENV_JUMP(3), and control returns to the
top "docatch". This then starts another third-level runops level, which executes the nextstate, pushmark and die ops on line 4. At the
point that the second "pp_die" is called, the C call stack looks exactly like that above, even though we are no longer within an inner
eval; this is because of the optimization mentioned earlier. However, the context stack now looks like this, ie with the top CxEVAL
popped:
STACK 0: MAIN
CX 0: BLOCK =>
CX 1: EVAL => AV() PV("A" )
retop=leave
STACK 1: MAGIC
CX 0: SUB =>
retop=(null)
The die on line 4 pops the context stack back down to the CxEVAL, leaving it as:
STACK 0: MAIN
CX 0: BLOCK =>
As usual, "PL_restartop" is extracted from the "CxEVAL", and a JMPENV_JUMP(3) done, which pops the C stack back to the docatch:
S_docatch
Perl_pp_entertry
Perl_runops # second loop
S_call_body
Perl_call_sv
Perl_pp_tie
Perl_runops # first loop
S_run_body
perl_run
main
In this case, because the "JMPENV" level recorded in the "CxEVAL" differs from the current one, "docatch" just does a JMPENV_JUMP(3)
and the C stack unwinds to:
perl_run
main
Because "PL_restartop" is non-null, "run_body" starts a new runops loop and execution continues.
Internal Variable Types
You should by now have had a look at perlguts, which tells you about Perl's internal variable types: SVs, HVs, AVs and the rest. If not, do
that now.
These variables are used not only to represent Perl-space variables, but also any constants in the code, as well as some structures com-
pletely internal to Perl. The symbol table, for instance, is an ordinary Perl hash. Your code is represented by an SV as it's read into the
parser; any program files you call are opened via ordinary Perl filehandles, and so on.
The core Devel::Peek module lets us examine SVs from a Perl program. Let's see, for instance, how Perl treats the constant "hello".
% perl -MDevel::Peek -e 'Dump("hello")'
1 SV = PV(0xa041450) at 0xa04ecbc
2 REFCNT = 1
3 FLAGS = (POK,READONLY,pPOK)
4 PV = 0xa0484e0 "hello"
5 CUR = 5
6 LEN = 6
Reading "Devel::Peek" output takes a bit of practise, so let's go through it line by line.
Line 1 tells us we're looking at an SV which lives at 0xa04ecbc in memory. SVs themselves are very simple structures, but they contain a
pointer to a more complex structure. In this case, it's a PV, a structure which holds a string value, at location 0xa041450. Line 2 is the
reference count; there are no other references to this data, so it's 1.
Line 3 are the flags for this SV - it's OK to use it as a PV, it's a read-only SV (because it's a constant) and the data is a PV inter-
nally. Next we've got the contents of the string, starting at location 0xa0484e0.
Line 5 gives us the current length of the string - note that this does not include the null terminator. Line 6 is not the length of the
string, but the length of the currently allocated buffer; as the string grows, Perl automatically extends the available storage via a rou-
tine called "SvGROW".
You can get at any of these quantities from C very easily; just add "Sv" to the name of the field shown in the snippet, and you've got a
macro which will return the value: "SvCUR(sv)" returns the current length of the string, "SvREFCOUNT(sv)" returns the reference count,
"SvPV(sv, len)" returns the string itself with its length, and so on. More macros to manipulate these properties can be found in perlguts.
Let's take an example of manipulating a PV, from "sv_catpvn", in sv.c
1 void
2 Perl_sv_catpvn(pTHX_ register SV *sv, register const char *ptr, register STRLEN len)
3 {
4 STRLEN tlen;
5 char *junk;
6 junk = SvPV_force(sv, tlen);
7 SvGROW(sv, tlen + len + 1);
8 if (ptr == junk)
9 ptr = SvPVX(sv);
10 Move(ptr,SvPVX(sv)+tlen,len,char);
11 SvCUR(sv) += len;
12 *SvEND(sv) = ' ';
13 (void)SvPOK_only_UTF8(sv); /* validate pointer */
14 SvTAINT(sv);
15 }
This is a function which adds a string, "ptr", of length "len" onto the end of the PV stored in "sv". The first thing we do in line 6 is
make sure that the SV has a valid PV, by calling the "SvPV_force" macro to force a PV. As a side effect, "tlen" gets set to the current
value of the PV, and the PV itself is returned to "junk".
In line 7, we make sure that the SV will have enough room to accommodate the old string, the new string and the null terminator. If "LEN"
isn't big enough, "SvGROW" will reallocate space for us.
Now, if "junk" is the same as the string we're trying to add, we can grab the string directly from the SV; "SvPVX" is the address of the PV
in the SV.
Line 10 does the actual catenation: the "Move" macro moves a chunk of memory around: we move the string "ptr" to the end of the PV - that's
the start of the PV plus its current length. We're moving "len" bytes of type "char". After doing so, we need to tell Perl we've extended
the string, by altering "CUR" to reflect the new length. "SvEND" is a macro which gives us the end of the string, so that needs to be a
" ".
Line 13 manipulates the flags; since we've changed the PV, any IV or NV values will no longer be valid: if we have "$a=10; $a.="6";" we
don't want to use the old IV of 10. "SvPOK_only_utf8" is a special UTF-8-aware version of "SvPOK_only", a macro which turns off the IOK and
NOK flags and turns on POK. The final "SvTAINT" is a macro which launders tainted data if taint mode is turned on.
AVs and HVs are more complicated, but SVs are by far the most common variable type being thrown around. Having seen something of how we
manipulate these, let's go on and look at how the op tree is constructed.
Op Trees
First, what is the op tree, anyway? The op tree is the parsed representation of your program, as we saw in our section on parsing, and it's
the sequence of operations that Perl goes through to execute your program, as we saw in "Running".
An op is a fundamental operation that Perl can perform: all the built-in functions and operators are ops, and there are a series of ops
which deal with concepts the interpreter needs internally - entering and leaving a block, ending a statement, fetching a variable, and so
on.
The op tree is connected in two ways: you can imagine that there are two "routes" through it, two orders in which you can traverse the
tree. First, parse order reflects how the parser understood the code, and secondly, execution order tells perl what order to perform the
operations in.
The easiest way to examine the op tree is to stop Perl after it has finished parsing, and get it to dump out the tree. This is exactly what
the compiler backends B::Terse, B::Concise and B::Debug do.
Let's have a look at how Perl sees "$a = $b + $c":
% perl -MO=Terse -e '$a=$b+$c'
1 LISTOP(0x8179888) leave
2 OP(0x81798b0) enter
3 COP(0x8179850) nextstate
4 BINOP(0x8179828) sassign
5 BINOP(0x8179800) add [1]
6 UNOP(0x81796e0) null [15]
7 SVOP(0x80fafe0) gvsv GV(0x80fa4cc) *b
8 UNOP(0x81797e0) null [15]
9 SVOP(0x8179700) gvsv GV(0x80efeb0) *c
10 UNOP(0x816b4f0) null [15]
11 SVOP(0x816dcf0) gvsv GV(0x80fa460) *a
Let's start in the middle, at line 4. This is a BINOP, a binary operator, which is at location 0x8179828. The specific operator in question
is "sassign" - scalar assignment - and you can find the code which implements it in the function "pp_sassign" in pp_hot.c. As a binary
operator, it has two children: the add operator, providing the result of "$b+$c", is uppermost on line 5, and the left hand side is on line
10.
Line 10 is the null op: this does exactly nothing. What is that doing there? If you see the null op, it's a sign that something has been
optimized away after parsing. As we mentioned in "Optimization", the optimization stage sometimes converts two operations into one, for
example when fetching a scalar variable. When this happens, instead of rewriting the op tree and cleaning up the dangling pointers, it's
easier just to replace the redundant operation with the null op. Originally, the tree would have looked like this:
10 SVOP(0x816b4f0) rv2sv [15]
11 SVOP(0x816dcf0) gv GV(0x80fa460) *a
That is, fetch the "a" entry from the main symbol table, and then look at the scalar component of it: "gvsv" ("pp_gvsv" into pp_hot.c) hap-
pens to do both these things.
The right hand side, starting at line 5 is similar to what we've just seen: we have the "add" op ("pp_add" also in pp_hot.c) add together
two "gvsv"s.
Now, what's this about?
1 LISTOP(0x8179888) leave
2 OP(0x81798b0) enter
3 COP(0x8179850) nextstate
"enter" and "leave" are scoping ops, and their job is to perform any housekeeping every time you enter and leave a block: lexical variables
are tidied up, unreferenced variables are destroyed, and so on. Every program will have those first three lines: "leave" is a list, and its
children are all the statements in the block. Statements are delimited by "nextstate", so a block is a collection of "nextstate" ops, with
the ops to be performed for each statement being the children of "nextstate". "enter" is a single op which functions as a marker.
That's how Perl parsed the program, from top to bottom:
Program
|
Statement
|
=
/
/
$a +
/
$b $c
However, it's impossible to perform the operations in this order: you have to find the values of $b and $c before you add them together,
for instance. So, the other thread that runs through the op tree is the execution order: each op has a field "op_next" which points to the
next op to be run, so following these pointers tells us how perl executes the code. We can traverse the tree in this order using the "exec"
option to "B::Terse":
% perl -MO=Terse,exec -e '$a=$b+$c'
1 OP(0x8179928) enter
2 COP(0x81798c8) nextstate
3 SVOP(0x81796c8) gvsv GV(0x80fa4d4) *b
4 SVOP(0x8179798) gvsv GV(0x80efeb0) *c
5 BINOP(0x8179878) add [1]
6 SVOP(0x816dd38) gvsv GV(0x80fa468) *a
7 BINOP(0x81798a0) sassign
8 LISTOP(0x8179900) leave
This probably makes more sense for a human: enter a block, start a statement. Get the values of $b and $c, and add them together. Find $a,
and assign one to the other. Then leave.
The way Perl builds up these op trees in the parsing process can be unravelled by examining perly.y, the YACC grammar. Let's take the piece
we need to construct the tree for "$a = $b + $c"
1 term : term ASSIGNOP term
2 { $$ = newASSIGNOP(OPf_STACKED, $1, $2, $3); }
3 | term ADDOP term
4 { $$ = newBINOP($2, 0, scalar($1), scalar($3)); }
If you're not used to reading BNF grammars, this is how it works: You're fed certain things by the tokeniser, which generally end up in
upper case. Here, "ADDOP", is provided when the tokeniser sees "+" in your code. "ASSIGNOP" is provided when "=" is used for assigning.
These are "terminal symbols", because you can't get any simpler than them.
The grammar, lines one and three of the snippet above, tells you how to build up more complex forms. These complex forms, "non-terminal
symbols" are generally placed in lower case. "term" here is a non-terminal symbol, representing a single expression.
The grammar gives you the following rule: you can make the thing on the left of the colon if you see all the things on the right in
sequence. This is called a "reduction", and the aim of parsing is to completely reduce the input. There are several different ways you can
perform a reduction, separated by vertical bars: so, "term" followed by "=" followed by "term" makes a "term", and "term" followed by "+"
followed by "term" can also make a "term".
So, if you see two terms with an "=" or "+", between them, you can turn them into a single expression. When you do this, you execute the
code in the block on the next line: if you see "=", you'll do the code in line 2. If you see "+", you'll do the code in line 4. It's this
code which contributes to the op tree.
| term ADDOP term
{ $$ = newBINOP($2, 0, scalar($1), scalar($3)); }
What this does is creates a new binary op, and feeds it a number of variables. The variables refer to the tokens: $1 is the first token in
the input, $2 the second, and so on - think regular expression backreferences. $$ is the op returned from this reduction. So, we call "new-
BINOP" to create a new binary operator. The first parameter to "newBINOP", a function in op.c, is the op type. It's an addition operator,
so we want the type to be "ADDOP". We could specify this directly, but it's right there as the second token in the input, so we use $2. The
second parameter is the op's flags: 0 means "nothing special". Then the things to add: the left and right hand side of our expression, in
scalar context.
Stacks
When perl executes something like "addop", how does it pass on its results to the next op? The answer is, through the use of stacks. Perl
has a number of stacks to store things it's currently working on, and we'll look at the three most important ones here.
Argument stack
Arguments are passed to PP code and returned from PP code using the argument stack, "ST". The typical way to handle arguments is to pop
them off the stack, deal with them how you wish, and then push the result back onto the stack. This is how, for instance, the cosine
operator works:
NV value;
value = POPn;
value = Perl_cos(value);
XPUSHn(value);
We'll see a more tricky example of this when we consider Perl's macros below. "POPn" gives you the NV (floating point value) of the top
SV on the stack: the $x in "cos($x)". Then we compute the cosine, and push the result back as an NV. The "X" in "XPUSHn" means that the
stack should be extended if necessary - it can't be necessary here, because we know there's room for one more item on the stack, since
we've just removed one! The "XPUSH*" macros at least guarantee safety.
Alternatively, you can fiddle with the stack directly: "SP" gives you the first element in your portion of the stack, and "TOP*" gives
you the top SV/IV/NV/etc. on the stack. So, for instance, to do unary negation of an integer:
SETi(-TOPi);
Just set the integer value of the top stack entry to its negation.
Argument stack manipulation in the core is exactly the same as it is in XSUBs - see perlxstut, perlxs and perlguts for a longer descrip-
tion of the macros used in stack manipulation.
Mark stack
I say "your portion of the stack" above because PP code doesn't necessarily get the whole stack to itself: if your function calls
another function, you'll only want to expose the arguments aimed for the called function, and not (necessarily) let it get at your own
data. The way we do this is to have a "virtual" bottom-of-stack, exposed to each function. The mark stack keeps bookmarks to locations
in the argument stack usable by each function. For instance, when dealing with a tied variable, (internally, something with "P" magic)
Perl has to call methods for accesses to the tied variables. However, we need to separate the arguments exposed to the method to the
argument exposed to the original function - the store or fetch or whatever it may be. Here's roughly how the tied "push" is implemented;
see "av_push" in av.c:
1 PUSHMARK(SP);
2 EXTEND(SP,2);
3 PUSHs(SvTIED_obj((SV*)av, mg));
4 PUSHs(val);
5 PUTBACK;
6 ENTER;
7 call_method("PUSH", G_SCALAR|G_DISCARD);
8 LEAVE;
Let's examine the whole implementation, for practice:
1 PUSHMARK(SP);
Push the current state of the stack pointer onto the mark stack. This is so that when we've finished adding items to the argument stack,
Perl knows how many things we've added recently.
2 EXTEND(SP,2);
3 PUSHs(SvTIED_obj((SV*)av, mg));
4 PUSHs(val);
We're going to add two more items onto the argument stack: when you have a tied array, the "PUSH" subroutine receives the object and the
value to be pushed, and that's exactly what we have here - the tied object, retrieved with "SvTIED_obj", and the value, the SV "val".
5 PUTBACK;
Next we tell Perl to update the global stack pointer from our internal variable: "dSP" only gave us a local copy, not a reference to the
global.
6 ENTER;
7 call_method("PUSH", G_SCALAR|G_DISCARD);
8 LEAVE;
"ENTER" and "LEAVE" localise a block of code - they make sure that all variables are tidied up, everything that has been localised gets
its previous value returned, and so on. Think of them as the "{" and "}" of a Perl block.
To actually do the magic method call, we have to call a subroutine in Perl space: "call_method" takes care of that, and it's described
in perlcall. We call the "PUSH" method in scalar context, and we're going to discard its return value. The call_method() function
removes the top element of the mark stack, so there is nothing for the caller to clean up.
Save stack
C doesn't have a concept of local scope, so perl provides one. We've seen that "ENTER" and "LEAVE" are used as scoping braces; the save
stack implements the C equivalent of, for example:
{
local $foo = 42;
...
}
See "Localising Changes" in perlguts for how to use the save stack.
Millions of Macros
One thing you'll notice about the Perl source is that it's full of macros. Some have called the pervasive use of macros the hardest thing
to understand, others find it adds to clarity. Let's take an example, the code which implements the addition operator:
1 PP(pp_add)
2 {
3 dSP; dATARGET; tryAMAGICbin(add,opASSIGN);
4 {
5 dPOPTOPnnrl_ul;
6 SETn( left + right );
7 RETURN;
8 }
9 }
Every line here (apart from the braces, of course) contains a macro. The first line sets up the function declaration as Perl expects for PP
code; line 3 sets up variable declarations for the argument stack and the target, the return value of the operation. Finally, it tries to
see if the addition operation is overloaded; if so, the appropriate subroutine is called.
Line 5 is another variable declaration - all variable declarations start with "d" - which pops from the top of the argument stack two NVs
(hence "nn") and puts them into the variables "right" and "left", hence the "rl". These are the two operands to the addition operator.
Next, we call "SETn" to set the NV of the return value to the result of adding the two values. This done, we return - the "RETURN" macro
makes sure that our return value is properly handled, and we pass the next operator to run back to the main run loop.
Most of these macros are explained in perlapi, and some of the more important ones are explained in perlxs as well. Pay special attention
to "Background and PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT" in perlguts for information on the "[pad]THX_?" macros.
The .i Targets
You can expand the macros in a foo.c file by saying
make foo.i
which will expand the macros using cpp. Don't be scared by the results.
SOURCE CODE STATIC ANALYSIS
Various tools exist for analysing C source code statically, as opposed to dynamically, that is, without executing the code. It is possible
to detect resource leaks, undefined behaviour, type mismatches, portability problems, code paths that would cause illegal memory accesses,
and other similar problems by just parsing the C code and looking at the resulting graph, what does it tell about the execution and data
flows. As a matter of fact, this is exactly how C compilers know to give warnings about dubious code.
lint, splint
The good old C code quality inspector, "lint", is available in several platforms, but please be aware that there are several different
implementations of it by different vendors, which means that the flags are not identical across different platforms.
There is a lint variant called "splint" (Secure Programming Lint) available from http://www.splint.org/ that should compile on any Unix-
like platform.
There are "lint" and <splint> targets in Makefile, but you may have to diddle with the flags (see above).
Coverity
Coverity (http://www.coverity.com/) is a product similar to lint and as a testbed for their product they periodically check several open
source projects, and they give out accounts to open source developers to the defect databases.
cpd (cut-and-paste detector)
The cpd tool detects cut-and-paste coding. If one instance of the cut-and-pasted code changes, all the other spots should probably be
changed, too. Therefore such code should probably be turned into a subroutine or a macro.
cpd (http://pmd.sourceforge.net/cpd.html) is part of the pmd project (http://pmd.sourceforge.net/). pmd was originally written for static
analysis of Java code, but later the cpd part of it was extended to parse also C and C++.
Download the pmd-bin-X.Y.zip () from the SourceForge site, extract the pmd-X.Y.jar from it, and then run that on source code thusly:
java -cp pmd-X.Y.jar net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.CPD --minimum-tokens 100 --files /some/where/src --language c > cpd.txt
You may run into memory limits, in which case you should use the -Xmx option:
java -Xmx512M ...
gcc warnings
Though much can be written about the inconsistency and coverage problems of gcc warnings (like "-Wall" not meaning "all the warnings", or
some common portability problems not being covered by "-Wall", or "-ansi" and "-pedantic" both being a poorly defined collection of warn-
ings, and so forth), gcc is still a useful tool in keeping our coding nose clean.
The "-Wall" is by default on.
The "-ansi" (and its sidekick, "-pedantic") would be nice to be on always, but unfortunately they are not safe on all platforms, they can
for example cause fatal conflicts with the system headers (Solaris being a prime example). If Configure "-Dgccansipedantic" is used, the
"cflags" frontend selects "-ansi -pedantic" for the platforms where they are known to be safe.
Starting from Perl 5.9.4 the following extra flags are added:
o "-Wendif-labels"
o "-Wextra"
o "-Wdeclaration-after-statement"
The following flags would be nice to have but they would first need their own Augean stablemaster:
o "-Wpointer-arith"
o "-Wshadow"
o "-Wstrict-prototypes"
The "-Wtraditional" is another example of the annoying tendency of gcc to bundle a lot of warnings under one switch -- it would be impossi-
ble to deploy in practice because it would complain a lot -- but it does contain some warnings that would be beneficial to have available
on their own, such as the warning about string constants inside macros containing the macro arguments: this behaved differently pre-ANSI
than it does in ANSI, and some C compilers are still in transition, AIX being an example.
Warnings of other C compilers
Other C compilers (yes, there are other C compilers than gcc) often have their "strict ANSI" or "strict ANSI with some portability exten-
sions" modes on, like for example the Sun Workshop has its "-Xa" mode on (though implicitly), or the DEC (these days, HP...) has its
"-std1" mode on.
DEBUGGING
You can compile a special debugging version of Perl, which allows you to use the "-D" option of Perl to tell more about what Perl is doing.
But sometimes there is no alternative than to dive in with a debugger, either to see the stack trace of a core dump (very useful in a bug
report), or trying to figure out what went wrong before the core dump happened, or how did we end up having wrong or unexpected results.
Poking at Perl
To really poke around with Perl, you'll probably want to build Perl for debugging, like this:
./Configure -d -D optimize=-g
make
"-g" is a flag to the C compiler to have it produce debugging information which will allow us to step through a running program, and to see
in which C function we are at (without the debugging information we might see only the numerical addresses of the functions, which is not
very helpful).
Configure will also turn on the "DEBUGGING" compilation symbol which enables all the internal debugging code in Perl. There are a whole
bunch of things you can debug with this: perlrun lists them all, and the best way to find out about them is to play about with them. The
most useful options are probably
l Context (loop) stack processing
t Trace execution
o Method and overloading resolution
c String/numeric conversions
Some of the functionality of the debugging code can be achieved using XS modules.
-Dr => use re 'debug'
-Dx => use O 'Debug'
Using a source-level debugger
If the debugging output of "-D" doesn't help you, it's time to step through perl's execution with a source-level debugger.
o We'll use "gdb" for our examples here; the principles will apply to any debugger (many vendors call their debugger "dbx"), but check the
manual of the one you're using.
To fire up the debugger, type
gdb ./perl
Or if you have a core dump:
gdb ./perl core
You'll want to do that in your Perl source tree so the debugger can read the source code. You should see the copyright message, followed by
the prompt.
(gdb)
"help" will get you into the documentation, but here are the most useful commands:
run [args]
Run the program with the given arguments.
break function_name
break source.c:xxx
Tells the debugger that we'll want to pause execution when we reach either the named function (but see "Internal Functions" in
perlguts!) or the given line in the named source file.
step
Steps through the program a line at a time.
next
Steps through the program a line at a time, without descending into functions.
continue
Run until the next breakpoint.
finish
Run until the end of the current function, then stop again.
'enter'
Just pressing Enter will do the most recent operation again - it's a blessing when stepping through miles of source code.
print
Execute the given C code and print its results. WARNING: Perl makes heavy use of macros, and gdb does not necessarily support macros
(see later "gdb macro support"). You'll have to substitute them yourself, or to invoke cpp on the source code files (see "The .i Tar-
gets") So, for instance, you can't say
print SvPV_nolen(sv)
but you have to say
print Perl_sv_2pv_nolen(sv)
You may find it helpful to have a "macro dictionary", which you can produce by saying "cpp -dM perl.c | sort". Even then, cpp won't recur-
sively apply those macros for you.
gdb macro support
Recent versions of gdb have fairly good macro support, but in order to use it you'll need to compile perl with macro definitions included
in the debugging information. Using gcc version 3.1, this means configuring with "-Doptimize=-g3". Other compilers might use a different
switch (if they support debugging macros at all).
Dumping Perl Data Structures
One way to get around this macro hell is to use the dumping functions in dump.c; these work a little like an internal Devel::Peek, but they
also cover OPs and other structures that you can't get at from Perl. Let's take an example. We'll use the "$a = $b + $c" we used before,
but give it a bit of context: "$b = "6XXXX"; $c = 2.3;". Where's a good place to stop and poke around?
What about "pp_add", the function we examined earlier to implement the "+" operator:
(gdb) break Perl_pp_add
Breakpoint 1 at 0x46249f: file pp_hot.c, line 309.
Notice we use "Perl_pp_add" and not "pp_add" - see "Internal Functions" in perlguts. With the breakpoint in place, we can run our program:
(gdb) run -e '$b = "6XXXX"; $c = 2.3; $a = $b + $c'
Lots of junk will go past as gdb reads in the relevant source files and libraries, and then:
Breakpoint 1, Perl_pp_add () at pp_hot.c:309
309 dSP; dATARGET; tryAMAGICbin(add,opASSIGN);
(gdb) step
311 dPOPTOPnnrl_ul;
(gdb)
We looked at this bit of code before, and we said that "dPOPTOPnnrl_ul" arranges for two "NV"s to be placed into "left" and "right" - let's
slightly expand it:
#define dPOPTOPnnrl_ul NV right = POPn;
SV *leftsv = TOPs;
NV left = USE_LEFT(leftsv) ? SvNV(leftsv) : 0.0
"POPn" takes the SV from the top of the stack and obtains its NV either directly (if "SvNOK" is set) or by calling the "sv_2nv" function.
"TOPs" takes the next SV from the top of the stack - yes, "POPn" uses "TOPs" - but doesn't remove it. We then use "SvNV" to get the NV from
"leftsv" in the same way as before - yes, "POPn" uses "SvNV".
Since we don't have an NV for $b, we'll have to use "sv_2nv" to convert it. If we step again, we'll find ourselves there:
Perl_sv_2nv (sv=0xa0675d0) at sv.c:1669
1669 if (!sv)
(gdb)
We can now use "Perl_sv_dump" to investigate the SV:
SV = PV(0xa057cc0) at 0xa0675d0
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (POK,pPOK)
PV = 0xa06a510 "6XXXX"
CUR = 5
LEN = 6
$1 = void
We know we're going to get 6 from this, so let's finish the subroutine:
(gdb) finish
Run till exit from #0 Perl_sv_2nv (sv=0xa0675d0) at sv.c:1671
0x462669 in Perl_pp_add () at pp_hot.c:311
311 dPOPTOPnnrl_ul;
We can also dump out this op: the current op is always stored in "PL_op", and we can dump it with "Perl_op_dump". This'll give us similar
output to B::Debug.
{
13 TYPE = add ===> 14
TARG = 1
FLAGS = (SCALAR,KIDS)
{
TYPE = null ===> (12)
(was rv2sv)
FLAGS = (SCALAR,KIDS)
{
11 TYPE = gvsv ===> 12
FLAGS = (SCALAR)
GV = main::b
}
}
# finish this later #
Patching
All right, we've now had a look at how to navigate the Perl sources and some things you'll need to know when fiddling with them. Let's now
get on and create a simple patch. Here's something Larry suggested: if a "U" is the first active format during a "pack", (for example,
"pack "U3C8", @stuff") then the resulting string should be treated as UTF-8 encoded.
How do we prepare to fix this up? First we locate the code in question - the "pack" happens at runtime, so it's going to be in one of the
pp files. Sure enough, "pp_pack" is in pp.c. Since we're going to be altering this file, let's copy it to pp.c~.
[Well, it was in pp.c when this tutorial was written. It has now been split off with "pp_unpack" to its own file, pp_pack.c]
Now let's look over "pp_pack": we take a pattern into "pat", and then loop over the pattern, taking each format character in turn into
"datum_type". Then for each possible format character, we swallow up the other arguments in the pattern (a field width, an asterisk, and so
on) and convert the next chunk input into the specified format, adding it onto the output SV "cat".
How do we know if the "U" is the first format in the "pat"? Well, if we have a pointer to the start of "pat" then, if we see a "U" we can
test whether we're still at the start of the string. So, here's where "pat" is set up:
STRLEN fromlen;
register char *pat = SvPVx(*++MARK, fromlen);
register char *patend = pat + fromlen;
register I32 len;
I32 datumtype;
SV *fromstr;
We'll have another string pointer in there:
STRLEN fromlen;
register char *pat = SvPVx(*++MARK, fromlen);
register char *patend = pat + fromlen;
+ char *patcopy;
register I32 len;
I32 datumtype;
SV *fromstr;
And just before we start the loop, we'll set "patcopy" to be the start of "pat":
items = SP - MARK;
MARK++;
sv_setpvn(cat, "", 0);
+ patcopy = pat;
while (pat < patend) {
Now if we see a "U" which was at the start of the string, we turn on the "UTF8" flag for the output SV, "cat":
+ if (datumtype == 'U' && pat==patcopy+1)
+ SvUTF8_on(cat);
if (datumtype == '#') {
while (pat < patend && *pat != '
')
pat++;
Remember that it has to be "patcopy+1" because the first character of the string is the "U" which has been swallowed into "datumtype!"
Oops, we forgot one thing: what if there are spaces at the start of the pattern? "pack(" U*", @stuff)" will have "U" as the first active
character, even though it's not the first thing in the pattern. In this case, we have to advance "patcopy" along with "pat" when we see
spaces:
if (isSPACE(datumtype))
continue;
needs to become
if (isSPACE(datumtype)) {
patcopy++;
continue;
}
OK. That's the C part done. Now we must do two additional things before this patch is ready to go: we've changed the behaviour of Perl, and
so we must document that change. We must also provide some more regression tests to make sure our patch works and doesn't create a bug
somewhere else along the line.
The regression tests for each operator live in t/op/, and so we make a copy of t/op/pack.t to t/op/pack.t~. Now we can add our tests to the
end. First, we'll test that the "U" does indeed create Unicode strings.
t/op/pack.t has a sensible ok() function, but if it didn't we could use the one from t/test.pl.
require './test.pl';
plan( tests => 159 );
so instead of this:
print 'not ' unless "1.20.300.4000" eq sprintf "%vd", pack("U*",1,20,300,4000);
print "ok $test
"; $test++;
we can write the more sensible (see Test::More for a full explanation of is() and other testing functions).
is( "1.20.300.4000", sprintf "%vd", pack("U*",1,20,300,4000),
"U* produces Unicode" );
Now we'll test that we got that space-at-the-beginning business right:
is( "1.20.300.4000", sprintf "%vd", pack(" U*",1,20,300,4000),
" with spaces at the beginning" );
And finally we'll test that we don't make Unicode strings if "U" is not the first active format:
isnt( v1.20.300.4000, sprintf "%vd", pack("C0U*",1,20,300,4000),
"U* not first isn't Unicode" );
Mustn't forget to change the number of tests which appears at the top, or else the automated tester will get confused. This will either
look like this:
print "1..156
";
or this:
plan( tests => 156 );
We now compile up Perl, and run it through the test suite. Our new tests pass, hooray!
Finally, the documentation. The job is never done until the paperwork is over, so let's describe the change we've just made. The relevant
place is pod/perlfunc.pod; again, we make a copy, and then we'll insert this text in the description of "pack":
=item *
If the pattern begins with a C<U>, the resulting string will be treated
as UTF-8-encoded Unicode. You can force UTF-8 encoding on in a string
with an initial C<U0>, and the bytes that follow will be interpreted as
Unicode characters. If you don't want this to happen, you can begin your
pattern with C<C0> (or anything else) to force Perl not to UTF-8 encode your
string, and then follow this with a C<U*> somewhere in your pattern.
All done. Now let's create the patch. Porting/patching.pod tells us that if we're making major changes, we should copy the entire directory
to somewhere safe before we begin fiddling, and then do
diff -ruN old new > patch
However, we know which files we've changed, and we can simply do this:
diff -u pp.c~ pp.c > patch
diff -u t/op/pack.t~ t/op/pack.t >> patch
diff -u pod/perlfunc.pod~ pod/perlfunc.pod >> patch
We end up with a patch looking a little like this:
--- pp.c~ Fri Jun 02 04:34:10 2000
+++ pp.c Fri Jun 16 11:37:25 2000
@@ -4375,6 +4375,7 @@
register I32 items;
STRLEN fromlen;
register char *pat = SvPVx(*++MARK, fromlen);
+ char *patcopy;
register char *patend = pat + fromlen;
register I32 len;
I32 datumtype;
@@ -4405,6 +4406,7 @@
...
And finally, we submit it, with our rationale, to perl5-porters. Job done!
Patching a core module
This works just like patching anything else, with an extra consideration. Many core modules also live on CPAN. If this is so, patch the
CPAN version instead of the core and send the patch off to the module maintainer (with a copy to p5p). This will help the module main-
tainer keep the CPAN version in sync with the core version without constantly scanning p5p.
The list of maintainers of core modules is usefully documented in Porting/Maintainers.pl.
Adding a new function to the core
If, as part of a patch to fix a bug, or just because you have an especially good idea, you decide to add a new function to the core, dis-
cuss your ideas on p5p well before you start work. It may be that someone else has already attempted to do what you are considering and
can give lots of good advice or even provide you with bits of code that they already started (but never finished).
You have to follow all of the advice given above for patching. It is extremely important to test any addition thoroughly and add new tests
to explore all boundary conditions that your new function is expected to handle. If your new function is used only by one module (e.g.
toke), then it should probably be named S_your_function (for static); on the other hand, if you expect it to accessible from other func-
tions in Perl, you should name it Perl_your_function. See "Internal Functions" in perlguts for more details.
The location of any new code is also an important consideration. Don't just create a new top level .c file and put your code there; you
would have to make changes to Configure (so the Makefile is created properly), as well as possibly lots of include files. This is strictly
pumpking business.
It is better to add your function to one of the existing top level source code files, but your choice is complicated by the nature of the
Perl distribution. Only the files that are marked as compiled static are located in the perl executable. Everything else is located in
the shared library (or DLL if you are running under WIN32). So, for example, if a function was only used by functions located in toke.c,
then your code can go in toke.c. If, however, you want to call the function from universal.c, then you should put your code in another
location, for example util.c.
In addition to writing your c-code, you will need to create an appropriate entry in embed.pl describing your function, then run 'make
regen_headers' to create the entries in the numerous header files that perl needs to compile correctly. See "Internal Functions" in
perlguts for information on the various options that you can set in embed.pl. You will forget to do this a few (or many) times and you
will get warnings during the compilation phase. Make sure that you mention this when you post your patch to P5P; the pumpking needs to
know this.
When you write your new code, please be conscious of existing code conventions used in the perl source files. See perlstyle for details.
Although most of the guidelines discussed seem to focus on Perl code, rather than c, they all apply (except when they don't ;). See also
Porting/patching.pod file in the Perl source distribution for lots of details about both formatting and submitting patches of your changes.
Lastly, TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST any code before posting to p5p. Test on as many platforms as you can find. Test as many perl Configure
options as you can (e.g. MULTIPLICITY). If you have profiling or memory tools, see "EXTERNAL TOOLS FOR DEBUGGING PERL" below for how to
use them to further test your code. Remember that most of the people on P5P are doing this on their own time and don't have the time to
debug your code.
Writing a test
Every module and built-in function has an associated test file (or should...). If you add or change functionality, you have to write a
test. If you fix a bug, you have to write a test so that bug never comes back. If you alter the docs, it would be nice to test what the
new documentation says.
In short, if you submit a patch you probably also have to patch the tests.
For modules, the test file is right next to the module itself. lib/strict.t tests lib/strict.pm. This is a recent innovation, so there
are some snags (and it would be wonderful for you to brush them out), but it basically works that way. Everything else lives in t/.
t/base/
Testing of the absolute basic functionality of Perl. Things like "if", basic file reads and writes, simple regexes, etc. These are run
first in the test suite and if any of them fail, something is really broken.
t/cmd/
These test the basic control structures, "if/else", "while", subroutines, etc.
t/comp/
Tests basic issues of how Perl parses and compiles itself.
t/io/
Tests for built-in IO functions, including command line arguments.
t/lib/
The old home for the module tests, you shouldn't put anything new in here. There are still some bits and pieces hanging around in here
that need to be moved. Perhaps you could move them? Thanks!
t/op/
Tests for perl's built in functions that don't fit into any of the other directories.
t/pod/
Tests for POD directives. There are still some tests for the Pod modules hanging around in here that need to be moved out into lib/.
t/run/
Testing features of how perl actually runs, including exit codes and handling of PERL* environment variables.
t/uni/
Tests for the core support of Unicode.
t/win32/
Windows-specific tests.
t/x2p
A test suite for the s2p converter.
The core uses the same testing style as the rest of Perl, a simple "ok/not ok" run through Test::Harness, but there are a few special con-
siderations.
There are three ways to write a test in the core. Test::More, t/test.pl and ad hoc "print $test ? "ok 42
" : "not ok 42
"". The deci-
sion of which to use depends on what part of the test suite you're working on. This is a measure to prevent a high-level failure (such as
Config.pm breaking) from causing basic functionality tests to fail.
t/base t/comp
Since we don't know if require works, or even subroutines, use ad hoc tests for these two. Step carefully to avoid using the feature
being tested.
t/cmd t/run t/io t/op
Now that basic require() and subroutines are tested, you can use the t/test.pl library which emulates the important features of
Test::More while using a minimum of core features.
You can also conditionally use certain libraries like Config, but be sure to skip the test gracefully if it's not there.
t/lib ext lib
Now that the core of Perl is tested, Test::More can be used. You can also use the full suite of core modules in the tests.
When you say "make test" Perl uses the t/TEST program to run the test suite (except under Win32 where it uses t/harness instead.) All
tests are run from the t/ directory, not the directory which contains the test. This causes some problems with the tests in lib/, so
here's some opportunity for some patching.
You must be triply conscious of cross-platform concerns. This usually boils down to using File::Spec and avoiding things like "fork()" and
"system()" unless absolutely necessary.
Special Make Test Targets
There are various special make targets that can be used to test Perl slightly differently than the standard "test" target. Not all them
are expected to give a 100% success rate. Many of them have several aliases, and many of them are not available on certain operating sys-
tems.
coretest
Run perl on all core tests (t/* and lib/[a-z]* pragma tests).
(Not available on Win32)
test.deparse
Run all the tests through B::Deparse. Not all tests will succeed.
(Not available on Win32)
test.taintwarn
Run all tests with the -t command-line switch. Not all tests are expected to succeed (until they're specifically fixed, of course).
(Not available on Win32)
minitest
Run miniperl on t/base, t/comp, t/cmd, t/run, t/io, t/op, and t/uni tests.
test.valgrind check.valgrind utest.valgrind ucheck.valgrind
(Only in Linux) Run all the tests using the memory leak + naughty memory access tool "valgrind". The log files will be named test-
name.valgrind.
test.third check.third utest.third ucheck.third
(Only in Tru64) Run all the tests using the memory leak + naughty memory access tool "Third Degree". The log files will be named
perl.3log.testname.
test.torture torturetest
Run all the usual tests and some extra tests. As of Perl 5.8.0 the only extra tests are Abigail's JAPHs, t/japh/abigail.t.
You can also run the torture test with t/harness by giving "-torture" argument to t/harness.
utest ucheck test.utf8 check.utf8
Run all the tests with -Mutf8. Not all tests will succeed.
(Not available on Win32)
minitest.utf16 test.utf16
Runs the tests with UTF-16 encoded scripts, encoded with different versions of this encoding.
"make utest.utf16" runs the test suite with a combination of "-utf8" and "-utf16" arguments to t/TEST.
(Not available on Win32)
test_harness
Run the test suite with the t/harness controlling program, instead of t/TEST. t/harness is more sophisticated, and uses the Test::Har-
ness module, thus using this test target supposes that perl mostly works. The main advantage for our purposes is that it prints a
detailed summary of failed tests at the end. Also, unlike t/TEST, it doesn't redirect stderr to stdout.
Note that under Win32 t/harness is always used instead of t/TEST, so there is no special "test_harness" target.
Under Win32's "test" target you may use the TEST_SWITCHES and TEST_FILES environment variables to control the behaviour of t/harness.
This means you can say
nmake test TEST_FILES="op/*.t"
nmake test TEST_SWITCHES="-torture" TEST_FILES="op/*.t"
test-notty test_notty
Sets PERL_SKIP_TTY_TEST to true before running normal test.
Running tests by hand
You can run part of the test suite by hand by using one the following commands from the t/ directory :
./perl -I../lib TEST list-of-.t-files
or
./perl -I../lib harness list-of-.t-files
(if you don't specify test scripts, the whole test suite will be run.)
Using t/harness for testing
If you use "harness" for testing you have several command line options available to you. The arguments are as follows, and are in the order
that they must appear if used together.
harness -v -torture -re=pattern LIST OF FILES TO TEST
harness -v -torture -re LIST OF PATTERNS TO MATCH
If "LIST OF FILES TO TEST" is omitted the file list is obtained from the manifest. The file list may include shell wildcards which will be
expanded out.
-v Run the tests under verbose mode so you can see what tests were run, and debug outbut.
-torture
Run the torture tests as well as the normal set.
-re=PATTERN
Filter the file list so that all the test files run match PATTERN. Note that this form is distinct from the -re LIST OF PATTERNS form
below in that it allows the file list to be provided as well.
-re LIST OF PATTERNS
Filter the file list so that all the test files run match /(LIST|OF|PATTERNS)/. Note that with this form the patterns are joined by '|'
and you cannot supply a list of files, instead the test files are obtained from the MANIFEST.
You can run an individual test by a command similar to
./perl -I../lib patho/to/foo.t
except that the harnesses set up some environment variables that may affect the execution of the test :
PERL_CORE=1
indicates that we're running this test part of the perl core test suite. This is useful for modules that have a dual life on CPAN.
PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL=2
is set to 2 if it isn't set already (see "PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL")
PERL
(used only by t/TEST) if set, overrides the path to the perl executable that should be used to run the tests (the default being
./perl).
PERL_SKIP_TTY_TEST
if set, tells to skip the tests that need a terminal. It's actually set automatically by the Makefile, but can also be forced artifi-
cially by running 'make test_notty'.
Other environment variables that may influence tests
PERL_TEST_Net_Ping
Setting this variable runs all the Net::Ping modules tests, otherwise some tests that interact with the outside world are skipped. See
perl58delta.
PERL_TEST_NOVREXX
Setting this variable skips the vrexx.t tests for OS2::REXX.
PERL_TEST_NUMCONVERTS
This sets a variable in op/numconvert.t.
See also the documentation for the Test and Test::Harness modules, for more environment variables that affect testing.
Common problems when patching Perl source code
Perl source plays by ANSI C89 rules: no C99 (or C++) extensions. In some cases we have to take pre-ANSI requirements into consideration.
You don't care about some particular platform having broken Perl? I hear there is still a strong demand for J2EE programmers.
Perl environment problems
o Not compiling with threading
Compiling with threading (-Duseithreads) completely rewrites the function prototypes of Perl. You better try your changes with that.
Related to this is the difference between "Perl_-less" and "Perl_-ly" APIs, for example:
Perl_sv_setiv(aTHX_ ...);
sv_setiv(...);
The first one explicitly passes in the context, which is needed for e.g. threaded builds. The second one does that implicitly; do not
get them mixed. If you are not passing in a aTHX_, you will need to do a dTHX (or a dVAR) as the first thing in the function.
See "How multiple interpreters and concurrency are supported" in perlguts for further discussion about context.
o Not compiling with -DDEBUGGING
The DEBUGGING define exposes more code to the compiler, therefore more ways for things to go wrong. You should try it.
o Introducing (non-read-only) globals
Do not introduce any modifiable globals, truly global or file static. They are bad form and complicate multithreading and other forms
of concurrency. The right way is to introduce them as new interpreter variables, see intrpvar.h (at the very end for binary compati-
bility).
Introducing read-only (const) globals is okay, as long as you verify with e.g. "nm libperl.a|egrep -v ' [TURtr] '" (if your "nm" has
BSD-style output) that the data you added really is read-only. (If it is, it shouldn't show up in the output of that command.)
If you want to have static strings, make them constant:
static const char etc[] = "...";
If you want to have arrays of constant strings, note carefully the right combination of "const"s:
static const char * const yippee[] =
{"hi", "ho", "silver"};
There is a way to completely hide any modifiable globals (they are all moved to heap), the compilation setting
"-DPERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT_PRIVATE". It is not normally used, but can be used for testing, read more about it in "Background and
PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT" in perlguts.
o Not exporting your new function
Some platforms (Win32, AIX, VMS, OS/2, to name a few) require any function that is part of the public API (the shared Perl library) to
be explicitly marked as exported. See the discussion about embed.pl in perlguts.
o Exporting your new function
The new shiny result of either genuine new functionality or your arduous refactoring is now ready and correctly exported. So what
could possibly go wrong?
Maybe simply that your function did not need to be exported in the first place. Perl has a long and not so glorious history of export-
ing functions that it should not have.
If the function is used only inside one source code file, make it static. See the discussion about embed.pl in perlguts.
If the function is used across several files, but intended only for Perl's internal use (and this should be the common case), do not
export it to the public API. See the discussion about embed.pl in perlguts.
Portability problems
The following are common causes of compilation and/or execution failures, not common to Perl as such. The C FAQ is good bedtime reading.
Please test your changes with as many C compilers and platforms as possible -- we will, anyway, and it's nice to save oneself from public
embarrassment.
If using gcc, you can add the "-std=c89" option which will hopefully catch most of these unportabilities. (However it might also catch
incompatibilities in your system's header files.)
Use the Configure "-Dgccansipedantic" flag to enable the gcc "-ansi -pedantic" flags which enforce stricter ANSI rules.
If using the "gcc -Wall" note that not all the possible warnings (like "-Wunitialized") are given unless you also compile with "-O".
Note that if using gcc, starting from Perl 5.9.5 the Perl core source code files (the ones at the top level of the source code distribu-
tion, but not e.g. the extensions under ext/) are automatically compiled with as many as possible of the "-std=c89", "-ansi", "-pedantic",
and a selection of "-W" flags (see cflags.SH).
Also study perlport carefully to avoid any bad assumptions about the operating system, filesystems, and so forth.
You may once in a while try a "make microperl" to see whether we can still compile Perl with just the bare minimum of interfaces. (See
README.micro.)
Do not assume an operating system indicates a certain compiler.
o Casting pointers to integers or casting integers to pointers
void castaway(U8* p)
{
IV i = p;
or
void castaway(U8* p)
{
IV i = (IV)p;
Both are bad, and broken, and unportable. Use the PTR2IV() macro that does it right. (Likewise, there are PTR2UV(), PTR2NV(),
INT2PTR(), and NUM2PTR().)
o Casting between data function pointers and data pointers
Technically speaking casting between function pointers and data pointers is unportable and undefined, but practically speaking it seems
to work, but you should use the FPTR2DPTR() and DPTR2FPTR() macros. Sometimes you can also play games with unions.
o Assuming sizeof(int) == sizeof(long)
There are platforms where longs are 64 bits, and platforms where ints are 64 bits, and while we are out to shock you, even platforms
where shorts are 64 bits. This is all legal according to the C standard. (In other words, "long long" is not a portable way to spec-
ify 64 bits, and "long long" is not even guaranteed to be any wider than "long".)
Instead, use the definitions IV, UV, IVSIZE, I32SIZE, and so forth. Avoid things like I32 because they are not guaranteed to be
exactly 32 bits, they are at least 32 bits, nor are they guaranteed to be int or long. If you really explicitly need 64-bit variables,
use I64 and U64, but only if guarded by HAS_QUAD.
o Assuming one can dereference any type of pointer for any type of data
char *p = ...;
long pony = *p; /* BAD */
Many platforms, quite rightly so, will give you a core dump instead of a pony if the p happens not be correctly aligned.
o Lvalue casts
(int)*p = ...; /* BAD */
Simply not portable. Get your lvalue to be of the right type, or maybe use temporary variables, or dirty tricks with unions.
o Assume anything about structs (especially the ones you don't control, like the ones coming from the system headers)
o That a certain field exists in a struct
o That no other fields exist besides the ones you know of
o That a field is of certain signedness, sizeof, or type
o That the fields are in a certain order
o While C guarantees the ordering specified in the struct definition, between different platforms the definitions might
differ
o That the sizeof(struct) or the alignments are the same everywhere
o There might be padding bytes between the fields to align the fields - the bytes can be anything
o Structs are required to be aligned to the maximum alignment required by the fields - which for native types is for usu-
ally equivalent to sizeof() of the field
o Mixing #define and #ifdef
#define BURGLE(x) ...
#ifdef BURGLE_OLD_STYLE /* BAD */
... do it the old way ...
#else
... do it the new way ...
#endif
You cannot portably "stack" cpp directives. For example in the above you need two separate BURGLE() #defines, one for each #ifdef
branch.
o Adding stuff after #endif or #else
#ifdef SNOSH
...
#else !SNOSH /* BAD */
...
#endif SNOSH /* BAD */
The #endif and #else cannot portably have anything non-comment after them. If you want to document what is going (which is a good idea
especially if the branches are long), use (C) comments:
#ifdef SNOSH
...
#else /* !SNOSH */
...
#endif /* SNOSH */
The gcc option "-Wendif-labels" warns about the bad variant (by default on starting from Perl 5.9.4).
o Having a comma after the last element of an enum list
enum color {
CERULEAN,
CHARTREUSE,
CINNABAR, /* BAD */
};
is not portable. Leave out the last comma.
Also note that whether enums are implicitly morphable to ints varies between compilers, you might need to (int).
o Using //-comments
// This function bamfoodles the zorklator. /* BAD */
That is C99 or C++. Perl is C89. Using the //-comments is silently allowed by many C compilers but cranking up the ANSI C89 strict-
ness (which we like to do) causes the compilation to fail.
o Mixing declarations and code
void zorklator()
{
int n = 3;
set_zorkmids(n); /* BAD */
int q = 4;
That is C99 or C++. Some C compilers allow that, but you shouldn't.
The gcc option "-Wdeclaration-after-statements" scans for such problems (by default on starting from Perl 5.9.4).
o Introducing variables inside for()
for(int i = ...; ...; ...) { /* BAD */
That is C99 or C++. While it would indeed be awfully nice to have that also in C89, to limit the scope of the loop variable, alas, we
cannot.
o Mixing signed char pointers with unsigned char pointers
int foo(char *s) { ... }
...
unsigned char *t = ...; /* Or U8* t = ... */
foo(t); /* BAD */
While this is legal practice, it is certainly dubious, and downright fatal in at least one platform: for example VMS cc considers this
a fatal error. One cause for people often making this mistake is that a "naked char" and therefore dereferencing a "naked char
pointer" have an undefined signedness: it depends on the compiler and the flags of the compiler and the underlying platform whether the
result is signed or unsigned. For this very same reason using a 'char' as an array index is bad.
o Macros that have string constants and their arguments as substrings of the string constants
#define FOO(n) printf("number = %d
", n) /* BAD */
FOO(10);
Pre-ANSI semantics for that was equivalent to
printf("10umber = %d10");
which is probably not what you were expecting. Unfortunately at least one reasonably common and modern C compiler does "real backward
compatibility" here, in AIX that is what still happens even though the rest of the AIX compiler is very happily C89.
o Using printf formats for non-basic C types
IV i = ...;
printf("i = %d
", i); /* BAD */
While this might by accident work in some platform (where IV happens to be an "int"), in general it cannot. IV might be something
larger. Even worse the situation is with more specific types (defined by Perl's configuration step in config.h):
Uid_t who = ...;
printf("who = %d
", who); /* BAD */
The problem here is that Uid_t might be not only not "int"-wide but it might also be unsigned, in which case large uids would be
printed as negative values.
There is no simple solution to this because of printf()'s limited intelligence, but for many types the right format is available as
with either 'f' or '_f' suffix, for example:
IVdf /* IV in decimal */
UVxf /* UV is hexadecimal */
printf("i = %"IVdf"
", i); /* The IVdf is a string constant. */
Uid_t_f /* Uid_t in decimal */
printf("who = %"Uid_t_f"
", who);
Or you can try casting to a "wide enough" type:
printf("i = %"IVdf"
", (IV)something_very_small_and_signed);
Also remember that the %p format really does require a void pointer:
U8* p = ...;
printf("p = %p
", (void*)p);
The gcc option "-Wformat" scans for such problems.
o Blindly using variadic macros
gcc has had them for a while with its own syntax, and C99 brought them with a standardized syntax. Don't use the former, and use the
latter only if the HAS_C99_VARIADIC_MACROS is defined.
o Blindly passing va_list
Not all platforms support passing va_list to further varargs (stdarg) functions. The right thing to do is to copy the va_list using
the Perl_va_copy() if the NEED_VA_COPY is defined.
o Using gcc statement expressions
val = ({...;...;...}); /* BAD */
While a nice extension, it's not portable. The Perl code does admittedly use them if available to gain some extra speed (essentially
as a funky form of inlining), but you shouldn't.
o Binding together several statements
Use the macros STMT_START and STMT_END.
STMT_START {
...
} STMT_END
o Testing for operating systems or versions when should be testing for features
#ifdef __FOONIX__ /* BAD */
foo = quux();
#endif
Unless you know with 100% certainty that quux() is only ever available for the "Foonix" operating system and that is available and cor-
rectly working for all past, present, and future versions of "Foonix", the above is very wrong. This is more correct (though still not
perfect, because the below is a compile-time check):
#ifdef HAS_QUUX
foo = quux();
#endif
How does the HAS_QUUX become defined where it needs to be? Well, if Foonix happens to be UNIXy enough to be able to run the Configure
script, and Configure has been taught about detecting and testing quux(), the HAS_QUUX will be correctly defined. In other platforms,
the corresponding configuration step will hopefully do the same.
In a pinch, if you cannot wait for Configure to be educated, or if you have a good hunch of where quux() might be available, you can
temporarily try the following:
#if (defined(__FOONIX__) || defined(__BARNIX__))
# define HAS_QUUX
#endif
...
#ifdef HAS_QUUX
foo = quux();
#endif
But in any case, try to keep the features and operating systems separate.
Problematic System Interfaces
o malloc(0), realloc(0), calloc(0, 0) are non-portable. To be portable allocate at least one byte. (In general you should rarely need
to work at this low level, but instead use the various malloc wrappers.)
o snprintf() - the return type is unportable. Use my_snprintf() instead.
Security problems
Last but not least, here are various tips for safer coding.
o Do not use gets()
Or we will publicly ridicule you. Seriously.
o Do not use strcpy() or strcat() or strncpy() or strncat()
Use my_strlcpy() and my_strlcat() instead: they either use the native implementation, or Perl's own implementation (borrowed from the
public domain implementation of INN).
o Do not use sprintf() or vsprintf()
If you really want just plain byte strings, use my_snprintf() and my_vsnprintf() instead, which will try to use snprintf() and
vsnprintf() if those safer APIs are available. If you want something fancier than a plain byte string, use SVs and Perl_sv_catpvf().
EXTERNAL TOOLS FOR DEBUGGING PERL
Sometimes it helps to use external tools while debugging and testing Perl. This section tries to guide you through using some common test-
ing and debugging tools with Perl. This is meant as a guide to interfacing these tools with Perl, not as any kind of guide to the use of
the tools themselves.
NOTE 1: Running under memory debuggers such as Purify, valgrind, or Third Degree greatly slows down the execution: seconds become minutes,
minutes become hours. For example as of Perl 5.8.1, the ext/Encode/t/Unicode.t takes extraordinarily long to complete under e.g. Purify,
Third Degree, and valgrind. Under valgrind it takes more than six hours, even on a snappy computer-- the said test must be doing something
that is quite unfriendly for memory debuggers. If you don't feel like waiting, that you can simply kill away the perl process.
NOTE 2: To minimize the number of memory leak false alarms (see "PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL" for more information), you have to have environment
variable PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL set to 2. The TEST and harness scripts do that automatically. But if you are running some of the tests manu-
ally-- for csh-like shells:
setenv PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL 2
and for Bourne-type shells:
PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL=2
export PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL
or in UNIXy environments you can also use the "env" command:
env PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL=2 valgrind ./perl -Ilib ...
NOTE 3: There are known memory leaks when there are compile-time errors within eval or require, seeing "S_doeval" in the call stack is a
good sign of these. Fixing these leaks is non-trivial, unfortunately, but they must be fixed eventually.
NOTE 4: DynaLoader will not clean up after itself completely unless Perl is built with the Configure option
"-Accflags=-DDL_UNLOAD_ALL_AT_EXIT".
Rational Software's Purify
Purify is a commercial tool that is helpful in identifying memory overruns, wild pointers, memory leaks and other such badness. Perl must
be compiled in a specific way for optimal testing with Purify. Purify is available under Windows NT, Solaris, HP-UX, SGI, and Siemens
Unix.
Purify on Unix
On Unix, Purify creates a new Perl binary. To get the most benefit out of Purify, you should create the perl to Purify using:
sh Configure -Accflags=-DPURIFY -Doptimize='-g'
-Uusemymalloc -Dusemultiplicity
where these arguments mean:
-Accflags=-DPURIFY
Disables Perl's arena memory allocation functions, as well as forcing use of memory allocation functions derived from the system mal-
loc.
-Doptimize='-g'
Adds debugging information so that you see the exact source statements where the problem occurs. Without this flag, all you will see
is the source filename of where the error occurred.
-Uusemymalloc
Disable Perl's malloc so that Purify can more closely monitor allocations and leaks. Using Perl's malloc will make Purify report most
leaks in the "potential" leaks category.
-Dusemultiplicity
Enabling the multiplicity option allows perl to clean up thoroughly when the interpreter shuts down, which reduces the number of bogus
leak reports from Purify.
Once you've compiled a perl suitable for Purify'ing, then you can just:
make pureperl
which creates a binary named 'pureperl' that has been Purify'ed. This binary is used in place of the standard 'perl' binary when you want
to debug Perl memory problems.
As an example, to show any memory leaks produced during the standard Perl testset you would create and run the Purify'ed perl as:
make pureperl
cd t
../pureperl -I../lib harness
which would run Perl on test.pl and report any memory problems.
Purify outputs messages in "Viewer" windows by default. If you don't have a windowing environment or if you simply want the Purify output
to unobtrusively go to a log file instead of to the interactive window, use these following options to output to the log file "perl.log":
setenv PURIFYOPTIONS "-chain-length=25 -windows=no
-log-file=perl.log -append-logfile=yes"
If you plan to use the "Viewer" windows, then you only need this option:
setenv PURIFYOPTIONS "-chain-length=25"
In Bourne-type shells:
PURIFYOPTIONS="..."
export PURIFYOPTIONS
or if you have the "env" utility:
env PURIFYOPTIONS="..." ../pureperl ...
Purify on NT
Purify on Windows NT instruments the Perl binary 'perl.exe' on the fly. There are several options in the makefile you should change to get
the most use out of Purify:
DEFINES
You should add -DPURIFY to the DEFINES line so the DEFINES line looks something like:
DEFINES = -DWIN32 -D_CONSOLE -DNO_STRICT $(CRYPT_FLAG) -DPURIFY=1
to disable Perl's arena memory allocation functions, as well as to force use of memory allocation functions derived from the system
malloc.
USE_MULTI = define
Enabling the multiplicity option allows perl to clean up thoroughly when the interpreter shuts down, which reduces the number of bogus
leak reports from Purify.
#PERL_MALLOC = define
Disable Perl's malloc so that Purify can more closely monitor allocations and leaks. Using Perl's malloc will make Purify report most
leaks in the "potential" leaks category.
CFG = Debug
Adds debugging information so that you see the exact source statements where the problem occurs. Without this flag, all you will see
is the source filename of where the error occurred.
As an example, to show any memory leaks produced during the standard Perl testset you would create and run Purify as:
cd win32
make
cd ../t
purify ../perl -I../lib harness
which would instrument Perl in memory, run Perl on test.pl, then finally report any memory problems.
valgrind
The excellent valgrind tool can be used to find out both memory leaks and illegal memory accesses. As of version 3.3.0, Valgrind only sup-
ports Linux on x86, x86-64 and PowerPC. The special "test.valgrind" target can be used to run the tests under valgrind. Found errors and
memory leaks are logged in files named testfile.valgrind.
Valgrind also provides a cachegrind tool, invoked on perl as:
VG_OPTS=--tool=cachegrind make test.valgrind
As system libraries (most notably glibc) are also triggering errors, valgrind allows to suppress such errors using suppression files. The
default suppression file that comes with valgrind already catches a lot of them. Some additional suppressions are defined in t/perl.supp.
To get valgrind and for more information see
http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/
Compaq's/Digital's/HP's Third Degree
Third Degree is a tool for memory leak detection and memory access checks. It is one of the many tools in the ATOM toolkit. The toolkit
is only available on Tru64 (formerly known as Digital UNIX formerly known as DEC OSF/1).
When building Perl, you must first run Configure with -Doptimize=-g and -Uusemymalloc flags, after that you can use the make targets
"perl.third" and "test.third". (What is required is that Perl must be compiled using the "-g" flag, you may need to re-Configure.)
The short story is that with "atom" you can instrument the Perl executable to create a new executable called perl.third. When the instru-
mented executable is run, it creates a log of dubious memory traffic in file called perl.3log. See the manual pages of atom and third for
more information. The most extensive Third Degree documentation is available in the Compaq "Tru64 UNIX Programmer's Guide", chapter
"Debugging Programs with Third Degree".
The "test.third" leaves a lot of files named foo_bar.3log in the t/ subdirectory. There is a problem with these files: Third Degree is so
effective that it finds problems also in the system libraries. Therefore you should used the Porting/thirdclean script to cleanup the
*.3log files.
There are also leaks that for given certain definition of a leak, aren't. See "PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL" for more information.
PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL
If you want to run any of the tests yourself manually using e.g. valgrind, or the pureperl or perl.third executables, please note that by
default perl does not explicitly cleanup all the memory it has allocated (such as global memory arenas) but instead lets the exit() of the
whole program "take care" of such allocations, also known as "global destruction of objects".
There is a way to tell perl to do complete cleanup: set the environment variable PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL to a non-zero value. The t/TEST wrap-
per does set this to 2, and this is what you need to do too, if you don't want to see the "global leaks": For example, for "third-degreed"
Perl:
env PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL=2 ./perl.third -Ilib t/foo/bar.t
(Note: the mod_perl apache module uses also this environment variable for its own purposes and extended its semantics. Refer to the
mod_perl documentation for more information. Also, spawned threads do the equivalent of setting this variable to the value 1.)
If, at the end of a run you get the message N scalars leaked, you can recompile with "-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS", which will cause the
addresses of all those leaked SVs to be dumped; it also converts "new_SV()" from a macro into a real function, so you can use your
favourite debugger to discover where those pesky SVs were allocated.
PERL_MEM_LOG
If compiled with "-DPERL_MEM_LOG", all Newx() and Renew() allocations and Safefree() in the Perl core go through logging functions, which
is handy for breakpoint setting. If also compiled with "-DPERL_MEM_LOG_STDERR", the allocations and frees are logged to STDERR (or more
precisely, to the file descriptor 2) in these logging functions, with the calling source code file and line number (and C function name, if
supported by the C compiler).
This logging is somewhat similar to "-Dm" but independent of "-DDEBUGGING", and at a higher level (the "-Dm" is directly at the point of
"malloc()", while the "PERL_MEM_LOG" is at the level of "New()").
Profiling
Depending on your platform there are various of profiling Perl.
There are two commonly used techniques of profiling executables: statistical time-sampling and basic-block counting.
The first method takes periodically samples of the CPU program counter, and since the program counter can be correlated with the code gen-
erated for functions, we get a statistical view of in which functions the program is spending its time. The caveats are that very
small/fast functions have lower probability of showing up in the profile, and that periodically interrupting the program (this is usually
done rather frequently, in the scale of milliseconds) imposes an additional overhead that may skew the results. The first problem can be
alleviated by running the code for longer (in general this is a good idea for profiling), the second problem is usually kept in guard by
the profiling tools themselves.
The second method divides up the generated code into basic blocks. Basic blocks are sections of code that are entered only in the begin-
ning and exited only at the end. For example, a conditional jump starts a basic block. Basic block profiling usually works by instrument-
ing the code by adding enter basic block #nnnn book-keeping code to the generated code. During the execution of the code the basic block
counters are then updated appropriately. The caveat is that the added extra code can skew the results: again, the profiling tools usually
try to factor their own effects out of the results.
Gprof Profiling
gprof is a profiling tool available in many UNIX platforms, it uses statistical time-sampling.
You can build a profiled version of perl called "perl.gprof" by invoking the make target "perl.gprof" (What is required is that Perl must
be compiled using the "-pg" flag, you may need to re-Configure). Running the profiled version of Perl will create an output file called
gmon.out is created which contains the profiling data collected during the execution.
The gprof tool can then display the collected data in various ways. Usually gprof understands the following options:
-a Suppress statically defined functions from the profile.
-b Suppress the verbose descriptions in the profile.
-e routine
Exclude the given routine and its descendants from the profile.
-f routine
Display only the given routine and its descendants in the profile.
-s Generate a summary file called gmon.sum which then may be given to subsequent gprof runs to accumulate data over several runs.
-z Display routines that have zero usage.
For more detailed explanation of the available commands and output formats, see your own local documentation of gprof.
quick hint:
$ sh Configure -des -Dusedevel -Doptimize='-g' -Accflags='-pg' -Aldflags='-pg' && make
$ ./perl someprog # creates gmon.out in current directory
$ gprof perl > out
$ view out
GCC gcov Profiling
Starting from GCC 3.0 basic block profiling is officially available for the GNU CC.
You can build a profiled version of perl called perl.gcov by invoking the make target "perl.gcov" (what is required that Perl must be com-
piled using gcc with the flags "-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage", you may need to re-Configure).
Running the profiled version of Perl will cause profile output to be generated. For each source file an accompanying ".da" file will be
created.
To display the results you use the "gcov" utility (which should be installed if you have gcc 3.0 or newer installed). gcov is run on
source code files, like this
gcov sv.c
which will cause sv.c.gcov to be created. The .gcov files contain the source code annotated with relative frequencies of execution indi-
cated by "#" markers.
Useful options of gcov include "-b" which will summarise the basic block, branch, and function call coverage, and "-c" which instead of
relative frequencies will use the actual counts. For more information on the use of gcov and basic block profiling with gcc, see the lat-
est GNU CC manual, as of GCC 3.0 see
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.0/gcc.html
and its section titled "8. gcov: a Test Coverage Program"
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.0/gcc_8.html#SEC132
quick hint:
$ sh Configure -des -Doptimize='-g' -Accflags='-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage'
-Aldflags='-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage' && make perl.gcov
$ rm -f regexec.c.gcov regexec.gcda
$ ./perl.gcov
$ gcov regexec.c
$ view regexec.c.gcov
Pixie Profiling
Pixie is a profiling tool available on IRIX and Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX aka DEC OSF/1) platforms. Pixie does its profiling using basic-
block counting.
You can build a profiled version of perl called perl.pixie by invoking the make target "perl.pixie" (what is required is that Perl must be
compiled using the "-g" flag, you may need to re-Configure).
In Tru64 a file called perl.Addrs will also be silently created, this file contains the addresses of the basic blocks. Running the pro-
filed version of Perl will create a new file called "perl.Counts" which contains the counts for the basic block for that particular program
execution.
To display the results you use the prof utility. The exact incantation depends on your operating system, "prof perl.Counts" in IRIX, and
"prof -pixie -all -L. perl" in Tru64.
In IRIX the following prof options are available:
-h Reports the most heavily used lines in descending order of use. Useful for finding the hotspot lines.
-l Groups lines by procedure, with procedures sorted in descending order of use. Within a procedure, lines are listed in source order.
Useful for finding the hotspots of procedures.
In Tru64 the following options are available:
-p[rocedures]
Procedures sorted in descending order by the number of cycles executed in each procedure. Useful for finding the hotspot procedures.
(This is the default option.)
-h[eavy]
Lines sorted in descending order by the number of cycles executed in each line. Useful for finding the hotspot lines.
-i[nvocations]
The called procedures are sorted in descending order by number of calls made to the procedures. Useful for finding the most used pro-
cedures.
-l[ines]
Grouped by procedure, sorted by cycles executed per procedure. Useful for finding the hotspots of procedures.
-testcoverage
The compiler emitted code for these lines, but the code was unexecuted.
-z[ero]
Unexecuted procedures.
For further information, see your system's manual pages for pixie and prof.
Miscellaneous tricks
o Those debugging perl with the DDD frontend over gdb may find the following useful:
You can extend the data conversion shortcuts menu, so for example you can display an SV's IV value with one click, without doing any
typing. To do that simply edit ~/.ddd/init file and add after:
! Display shortcuts.
Ddd*gdbDisplayShortcuts:
/t () // Convert to Bin
/d () // Convert to Dec
/x () // Convert to Hex
/o () // Convert to Oct(
the following two lines:
((XPV*) (())->sv_any )->xpv_pv // 2pvx
((XPVIV*) (())->sv_any )->xiv_iv // 2ivx
so now you can do ivx and pvx lookups or you can plug there the sv_peek "conversion":
Perl_sv_peek(my_perl, (SV*)()) // sv_peek
(The my_perl is for threaded builds.) Just remember that every line, but the last one, should end with
Alternatively edit the init file interactively via: 3rd mouse button -> New Display -> Edit Menu
Note: you can define up to 20 conversion shortcuts in the gdb section.
o If you see in a debugger a memory area mysteriously full of 0xABABABAB or 0xEFEFEFEF, you may be seeing the effect of the Poison()
macros, see perlclib.
CONCLUSION
We've had a brief look around the Perl source, how to maintain quality of the source code, an overview of the stages perl goes through when
it's running your code, how to use debuggers to poke at the Perl guts, and finally how to analyse the execution of Perl. We took a very
simple problem and demonstrated how to solve it fully - with documentation, regression tests, and finally a patch for submission to p5p.
Finally, we talked about how to use external tools to debug and test Perl.
I'd now suggest you read over those references again, and then, as soon as possible, get your hands dirty. The best way to learn is by
doing, so:
o Subscribe to perl5-porters, follow the patches and try and understand them; don't be afraid to ask if there's a portion you're not clear
on - who knows, you may unearth a bug in the patch...
o Keep up to date with the bleeding edge Perl distributions and get familiar with the changes. Try and get an idea of what areas people
are working on and the changes they're making.
o Do read the README associated with your operating system, e.g. README.aix on the IBM AIX OS. Don't hesitate to supply patches to that
README if you find anything missing or changed over a new OS release.
o Find an area of Perl that seems interesting to you, and see if you can work out how it works. Scan through the source, and step over it
in the debugger. Play, poke, investigate, fiddle! You'll probably get to understand not just your chosen area but a much wider range of
perl's activity as well, and probably sooner than you'd think.
The Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began.
If you can do these things, you've started on the long road to Perl porting. Thanks for wanting to help make Perl better - and happy hack-
ing!
AUTHOR
This document was written by Nathan Torkington, and is maintained by the perl5-porters mailing list.
perl v5.8.9 2007-11-17 PERLHACK(1)