Re: [Ctags-devel] WindRes parser

[Colomban W. <lis...@he...>]

DISCLAIMER: I am not a CTags developer, I just hack on parsers for some
time now.


Le 15/08/2013 14:08, Frank Fesevur a écrit :
> Hi all,

Hi Frank,
> I am new to the list, so let me first introduce myself. My name is
> Frank Fesevur and I am from the Netherlands. I have written some open
> source programs. At the moment I have two main projects, both are
> plug-ins for Notepad++, a popular text editor for Windows. One of them
> is a yet to be released ctags plug-in. The code of this plug-in is
> already available at https://github.com/ffes/npptags

Welcome here then :)

> I have attached a parser I created for Windows Resource files. For
> those of you not familiar with Windows development, in a .rc file UI
> things like dialogs and menus are defined.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_%28Windows%29
> 
> Here are three links to resource files so you can see the parser in action.
> https://github.com/ffes/npptags/blob/master/NppTags_res.rc
> https://github.com/ffes/nppsnippets/blob/master/NppSnippets_res.rc
> http://dorgem.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/dorgem/Dorgem/Dorgem.rc

Good, providing samples is just great since people don't know every
languages, +100 ;)

> In its current state it recognizes the resources dialogs, menus,
> bitmaps, cursors and icons. That is what I needed at the moment. To
> add the other types of resources is not difficult, but just not done
> yet. If you think the parser could get included in ctags, I will
> gladly complete it. At first I'll add all common resources. Maybe
> later also add the controls that belong to a resource (in begin/end
> block).

First, the parser looks quite good and simple, apart from a few things
I'll elaborate below, good job.

However, I have to warn you:  the ctags developers here aren't really
responsive (I don't blame them, they probably have other things to do,
no bashing), which means you may have to wait a looong time before you
get an answer.  Either be very patient, or don't put too much hope on it.


Now, a few comments on the parser:

* Watch string ends.
  you do:

	while (!isspace((int) *line)) ..

  This is dangerous if the line only contains non-space characters,
because you'll pass by the end of the string.  Just add a check for \0
(string terminator):

	while (*line && !isspace((int) *line))

  or alike.

  OTOH, code like

	while (isspace((int) *line))

  is fine since the string delimiter character will not validate the
isspace() condition anyway.


* You may want to use vStringValue() instead of manually accessing
str->buffer.  I guess it won't change much, but maybe if sometimes the
vString implementation is changed it might help -- but that certainly is
not a big deal.


* Don't index strings at a negative offset:

	else if( *line == '*' && *(line-1) == '/' )

  might index the string at a negative index if '*' appears to be the
first character on a line.  I would rather do it the other way around:

	else if (*line == '/' && line[1] == '*')

  since indexing at +1 is OK since it would only hit the string
termination character (\0).


* Just some style, I'd rather combine the 2 checks for single line
comments in one:

	else if (*line == '/' && line[1] == '/')


I hope it helps :)


> Other than that I am also busy fixing the css parser that is available
> at several locations on the net and is not yet included in the
> official ctags. But I will send a separate mail about that parser when
> I have fixed the problems (mainly related to css3 tags). This to keep
> the conversation about the two parser separated from each other.

Yep, good to separate mails so this don't get bloated by off-topic stuff.


Best regards,
Colomban