Re: [pygccxml-development] Printing declarations...

[Matthias B. <ba...@ir...>]

Roman Yakovenko wrote:
>>>> Almost, the signature is there but the actual method name is missing.
>>> Okay, I give up :-). I understand what you want, but I don't
>>> understand the format.
>> The more it resembles the original source code the better. I'm dumping
>> the declarations into a log file that the user can inspect. For example,
>> he could just grep for a particular function name to find out what
>> decorations have been applied to that function.
> 
>>> Also, why do you need this from framework. You have all tools to
>>> create almost any format by your own?
>> Well, yes, but it seems that recreating the source code doesn't look
>> that easy to me (and I don't know how much of the original source code
>> (which could be reused here) has survived in the output from gccxml).
>> When I have some time left I can have a look at it. Would you like the
>> idea to add __str__() methods to the declaration_t classes? (then a user
>> could just print a declaration and see exactly what it is)
> 
> Before you do it, please ask your self next questions:
> 1. What is the difference between output of decl_printer_t?

decl_printer_t is a more advanced way to output a declaration (or an 
entire tree) whereas I'd expect the __str__ method to return a concise 
version of the declaration (preferably in one line) so that it can be 
uniquely identified by the user.

For example, I have a method that the decl_printer_t outputs like this:

member_function_t: 'selectByName'
     Signature: [u'::MStatus', [u'::MString const &', 
u'::MGlobal::ListAdjustment']]

The __str__ method could instead return something like:

MStatus MGlobal::selectByName(MString const &, MGlobal::ListAdjustment) 
[member_function]

That is, it is almost C++ source code.
The advantage of having only one line is that you can use 'grep' to find 
  a particular declaration in a log file.

By the way, in the case of a class, I don't expect the entire class to 
be printed (including members) but only the class name.
If I really want to inspect the contents of the class I can still use 
the decl_printer.

> 2. Why we need 2 implementation of __str__ methods

I don't understand. So far, there is no __str__ method. When I print a 
declaration I get something like:

<pyplusplus.decl_wrappers.calldef_wrapper.member_function_t object at 
0xb75b826c>

> 3. is decl_printer_t should be implemented in terms of __str__ method, or may be
>    __str__ method should be implemented in terms of decl_printer_t

I think they serve different purposes. __str__ should yield a short but 
unique human-readable representation of the object (like an id so that 
the user knows where to find this declaration in his source code) 
whereas decl_printer_t can be used to inspect an entire declaration 
tree. The decl_printer can be used by a new user to find out how 
pyplusplus works and how it stores its data.

> 4. How you configure the a amount of printed information.

It's ok to be able to configure decl_printer_t, but in my opinion 
__str__ doesn't need to be configured.


- Matthias -