Clear all Cmake variables at once - c++

Is there any command that I can place in a CMakeLists.txt file to clear all the variables that have been defined?
If I understood well I can selectively clear them doing 'unset' selectively on each variable, but I would need to do something more like 'unset(*)'.

You can unset all variables like this:
get_cmake_property(_variableNames VARIABLES)
foreach (_variableName ${_variableNames})
unset(${_variableName})
endforeach()
This essentially gets all variables at the global scope and calls unset on them. As #'Some programmer dude' noted, this is not recommended, and will likely cause CMake to stop functioning correctly.

Related

How to identify uninitialized variables in a Lua script, without running it

I'd like to be able to write some Lua code like this:
y=x+1
and be able to get the names of all variables (x and y in this case) so that I can read from/write to them in the calling C++ program. The problem is that x is uninitialized, so this chunk will not execute and therefore neither variable will appear in the globals table. My current work-around is to have the user explicitly declare that they want to initialize x externally (as well as how to initialize it), then I pre-pend the Lua script with an appropriate declaration for x, so that the final script looks like this:
x= /*some value calculated outside of the Lua script*/
y=x+1
Although this works, I'd really like to have a way to automatically list all uninitialized variables in the Lua code and present them to the user, instead of the user having to remember to explicitly declare them. A function that parses the Lua code without executing it would probably be what I want. I've tried the function luaL_loadstring, but x and y don't show up in the globals table.
Since this is a bit vague, I'll give an actual use case. My C++ code basically performs optimizations on functions, such as finding a root or a maximum. I want the user to be able to define custom functions (in the form of Lua scripts), which in general will have one or more inputs and one or more outputs. The user will define which parameters the optimizer should operate on. For example, the user may want to find the minimum of y=x^2. The way I'd like it to work is that the user writes a Lua script consisting of nothing more than y=x^2, and then tells the optimizer to vary x in order to minimize y. On each iteration of the optimizer, the current guess for x would be automatically pasted into the user script, which is then executed, and then the value of y is pulled from the Lua state to be fed back to the optimizer. This is how I have it working now, however it's a bit clumsy from a UX perspective because the user has to manually declare that x is a Lua variable. This gets tedious when there are many variables that require manual declaration. It would be much better if I could automatically scan the script and show the user a list of their undeclared variables so they could then use drag-and-drop and other GUI sugar to do the manual declaration.
Lua isn't meant to work like that. Lua/C interop is intended to be collaborative; it's not supposed to be that C can do whatever it wants.
Using your example, if you have a Lua script that is supposed to take a value from C and return that value + 1, then you spell that in Lua like this:
local x = ... --Get the first parameter to the chunk.
return x + 1 --Adds 1 to the value and returns it.
You compile this string into a Lua chunk and call it like a Lua function. You pass it the value you want to manipulate and get the return value from the Lua stack.
The idea is not that C code can just reach into a Lua script and shove data into it arbitrarily. The above chunk takes parameters from the user and provides return values to the user. That's typically how C interfaces with Lua.
Yes, you can write values to globals and have the Lua script read them, and write its "results" to globals that the external code reads. But this is not the most effective way to interact with scripts.
I'd really like to have a way to automatically list all uninitialized variables
There's no such thing in Lua as an "uninitialized variable". Not in the way that you mean.
Yes, there are globals. But whether that global has a value or not is not something the Lua script can control. A global is global after all; you can set a global variable from outside of the script (for example, see lua_setglobal). If you do, then a script that reads from it will read the value you set. But it doesn't know anything about that.
What you want is a static code analyzer/Lua linter. Take a look at Luacheck:
Luacheck is a static analyzer and a linter for Lua. Luacheck detects
various issues such as usage of undefined global variables, unused
variables, and values, accessing uninitialized variables, unreachable
code and more. Most aspects of checking are configurable: there are
options for defining custom project-related globals, for selecting set
of standard globals (version of Lua standard library), for filtering
warnings by type and name of related variables, etc. The options can
be used on the command line, put into a config or directly into
checked files as Lua comments.
There is also Lualint, and similar Lua linters for Atom, VSCode, or your fav IDE.

Is there any problems with naming a local variable `property`?

I'm trying to refactor a local variable in CLion to name it property but it won't actually let me. There's no error when I do it myself but the refactoring tool is a bit less tedious.
Renaming property__ to property
Is this a bug from CLion or there's actually a reason it doesn't want me to do that ? I imagine that if it's not a bug, it might be entering in conflict with something else making it safer for me to use another name.
PS: To curious wondering I need to call a variable something as generic as property, I'm looping through XML attributes and the XML library I'm using call that properties (I'm not sure why).
for(c_xml_config::nodeProperty property : xmlModule.properties)
{
//Lots of this calling this variable making it tedious to rename at hand...
}
In plain C++ property is not reserved, so yes you can use it.
It appears to be a keyword in a Microsoft C++ extension.

Makefile : using environment variable or cmd line argument

I have a requirement where i need to set a variable in the makefile depending upon :
If it is passed as an argument to the makefile
If it is set as an environment variable.
The name of the variable is same if set as env variable or passed as argument.
Priority is the one passed as argument.
Make already provides this behavior, built in. When make starts all environment variables are imported as make variables. And any variable assignment set on the command line overrides all other settings of the variable, including both in the environment and in the makefile.
Can you be more clear about what you want, that is not the same as the default behavior?

Pass directory to C++ application from compiler

Some applications contain scripts that are run by the main application that reside in /usr/libexec. However, the autoconf scripts are able to change that directory by passing --libexecdir to the configure script.
For example, when running ./configure in the git source code, I can set --libexecdir to any directory I want, and the program will still work.
What do I need to add to a C++ to make this functionality work? In other words, how can I have a directory name set by a configure script compiled into the program?
You need the value of the #libexecdir# substitution variable (as used in e.g. Makefile.in) to be exposed to your C++ code. The simplest and most reliable way to do that is with a -D switch on the compiler command line for the object file that needs to know:
foo.o: CPPFLAGS += -DLIBEXECDIR='"$(libexecdir)"'
In foo.cc, LIBEXECDIR will then be a preprocessor macro expanding to a string constant that has the path you need. Two caveats, though: The above Makefile snippet uses a GNU make feature, target-specific variables. It will not work in other Make implementations. Also, I didn't bother quoting any characters in the expansion of $(libexecdir). Fully defensive quoting would look something like this:
foo.o: CPPFLAGS += \
-DLIBEXECDIR='"$(subst ",\",$(subst ','\'',$(subst \,\\,$(libexecdir))))"'
You will definitely need at least the innermost $(subst ...) construct if you want to be able to use Windows pathnames, with the slashes going the wrong way. People don't usually put ' or " in pathnames, so I probably wouldn't bother with the outer two until someone complained.
The same technique will work for any #whatever# substitution variable that isn't also an AC_DEFINE.
You might think you could use AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED somehow to get the value of $(libexecdir) into config.h and so avoid all this mucking around with the command line. Unfortunately, Autoconf doesn't fully compute the value of its #*dir# substitutions at configure time:
# near the top of the generated 'configure':
exec_prefix=NONE
libexecdir='${exec_prefix}/libexec'
# much, much later -- as part of AC_OUTPUT:
test "x$exec_prefix" = xNONE && exec_prefix='${prefix}'
Therefore, if you do the obvious thing with AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED, you will get something like
#define LIBEXECDIR "${exec_prefix}/libexec"
in your config.h. So that's not going to work, and I don't see a good way to make it work.

Global Variable Count

How to count the number of global variables in C++ with a program that I can run with Grep?
A better method is to have your compiler print a map file. Most map files list all the global variables and their locations. If you're lucky, the map file may even indicate which translation unit the global variable belongs to.
Grep has no knowledge of the syntax or the grammar; it operates on lines. I don't think this is possible.
Here's a snippet of some code I'm working on:
int count;
Can you tell me if it's global?
You might be able to grep something in the artifacts of compilation such as listing files or object files.
Have you considered using something like cflow? You can get the GNU's version of cflow, the output, can then be greppable?
Hope this helps.