Background
I am used to strongly typed, compiled languages so I'm used to misspellings being pretty much instantly picked up as undeclared variables.
However since Matlab is a weakly typed language this doesn't happen automatically and my development cycle tends to be:
write function(s)
|
˅
Run <-------------------------
| |
˅ |
Crash due to misspelling/typo |
| |
˅ |
Correct typo -----------------|
The run process can run for several minutes before getting to the typo, which slows down my development cycle considerably.
I'm using matlab version 2007b
Question
Is there any way to validate a function such that the use of non-existent variables etc are picked up without having to run the whole program? Given that each function has its own variable space it feels like this should be possible.
I am aware that is it possible to get a list of dependencies using depfun however I've not been able to find any way to validate those functions.
For example the following function will always fail but produces no warnings until it is run
function [biggest]=getBiggest(variableName1, variableName2)
if variablename1>variableName2, %<---misspelling!
biggest=variableName1;
else
biggest=variableName2;
end
end
I suspect that you are either using a different editor, or that you changed your warning preferences.
When going to home > preferences > code analyzer make sure you have the one enabled that contains something like:
cannot determine whether ... is a variable or a function
The MATLAB Linter will generally pick up variables that are used before being assigned (e.g. because it's a typo), but it isn't perfect. It is enabled by default (in R2011b, at least) in the GUI but can also be run outside of MATLAB: http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/mlint.html
The Code Analyzer should catch most things like that.
Personally I would create some unit tests. I use xUnit, but there is a whole question dedicated to it: Unit-testing framework for MATLAB.
For sure it will catch syntax errors. In addition it helps checking the algorithm.
Related
I want to compile my app using matlab-compiler it does so, but with issues...
It says there are some functions that are not licensed for compilation.
The problem is that I haven't used those functions (one of them is fimath.m) in my app.
I think these functions are used inside some of my functions which I don't know.
My question is how to find out which one of my functions are using those functions in order to remove them or replace them with other functions.
There are more than 50 functions in my app and it's not possible to check them one by one.
For every returned "unlicensed" function you can execute the following command,
dbstop in <function name> % without the <>
and afterwards run your code normally for several typical inputs/cases. If it stops at one of these breakpoints, look at the call stack (using either dbstack or the Editor tab of the MATLAB GUI), and identify the entry point from your own code.
If none of the breakpoints is ever hit, it could mean that these functions are referred-to inside the code, but some logic is preventing their execution (turning them, practically, to "unreachable code"). In this case, you will likely need to remove these references manually. To know where from, using information from the link posted by VTodorov you can list the dependencies of each file using
[fList,pList] = matlab.codetools.requiredFilesAndProducts('myFun.m');
which can be called on the output of dir (after some minor conversion). It could be useful to use the toponly flag.
I was wondering if it's currently possible to have an 'external' (.so/.dylib) LLVM plugin (module) pass scheduled at LTO time? The reason for wanting this is a inter-modular optimization I want to add.
I also found this topic; How to write a custom intermodular pass in LLVM?
But a separate tool is not an option for me.
Thanks
I think the most helpful thing here might be to understand how passes are run and what the state of the code is during LTO.
First of all, when optimization passes are run by the compiler, they are done as a set that has been added to a PassManager. This means that LLVM/Clang, when passed something like -O3 will create a copy of a PassManager and subsequently provide it the set of passes expected to provide O3 level of optimization. This is very different from what you are doing with an external library which must be provided manually and cannot be fit into the pass pipeline normally.
Then we have the state of things when doing LTO. During Link Time Optimization, all of the individual translation units have been consolidated and are now a single Module. This means that an optimization which runs on each function will run on every function in the code base. Similarly, a per-module optimization will run on the full Module and therefor offer Inter-Procedural Analysis/Optimization.
If you're looking to use an Intra-Modular Pass then there is no reason to do this at LTO time and instead you can simply make a ModulePass and run that on each unit.
Let us say that I have a Matlab function and I change its signature (i.e. add parameter). As Matlab does not 'compile' is there an easy way to determine which other functions do not use the right signature (i.e. submits the additional parameter). I do not want to determine this at runtime (i.e. get an error message) or have to do text searches. Hope this makes sense. Any feedback would be very much appreciated. Many thanks.
If I understand you correctly, you want to change a function's signature and find all functions/scripts/classes that call it in the "old" way, and change it to the "new" way.
You also indicated you don't want to do it at runtime, or do text searches, but there is no way to detect "incorrect" calls at "parse-time", so I'm afraid these demands leave no option at all to detect old function calls...
What I would do in that case is temporarily add a few lines to the new function:
function myFunc(param1, param2, newParam) % <-- the NEW signature
if nargin == 2
clc, error('old call detected.'); end
and then run the main script/function/whatever in which this function resides. You'll get one error for each time something calls the function incorrectly, along with the error stack in the Matlab command window.
It is then a matter of clicking on the link in the bottom of the error stack, correct the function call, and repeat from the top until no more errors occur.
Don't forget to remove these lines when you're done, or better, replace the word error with warning just to capture anything that was missed.
Better yet: if you're on linux, a text search would be a matter of
$ grep -l 'myFunc(.*,.*); *.m'
which will list all the files having the "incorrect" call. That's not too difficult I'd say...You can probably do a similar thing with the standard windows search, but I can't test that right now.
This is more or less what the dependency report was invented for. Using that tool, you can find what functions/scripts call your altered function. Then it is just a question of manually inspecting every occurrence.
However, I'd advise to make your changes to the function signature such that backwards compatibility is maintained. You can do so by specifying default values for new parameters and/or issuing a warning in those scenarios. That way, your code will run, and you will get run-time hints of deprecated code (which is more or less a necessary evil in interpreted/dynamic languages).
For many dynamic languages (and MATLAB specifically) it is generally impossible to fully inspect the code without the interpreter executing the code. Just imagine the following piece of code:
x = magic(10);
In general, you'd say that the magic function is called. However, magic could map to a totally different function. This could be done in ways that are invisible to a static analysis tool (such as the dependency report): e.g. eval('magic = 1:100;');.
The only way is to go through your whole code base, either inspecting every occurrence manually (which can be found easily with a text search) or by running a test that fully covers your code base.
edit:
There is however a way to access intermediate outputs of the MATLAB parser. This can be accessed using the undocumented and unsupported mtree function (which can be called like this: t = mtree(file, '-file'); for every file in your code base). Using the resulting structure you might be able to find calls with a certain amount of parameters.
I have a workspace built using MS-Visual Studio 2005 with all C code.In that i see many functions which are not called but they are still compiled(they are not under any compile time macro to disable them from compiling).
I set following optimization settings for the MS-VS2005 project to remove that unused code:-
Optimization level - /Ox
Enable whole program optimization - /GL
I tried both Favor speed /Ot and Favor Size /Os
Inspite of all these options, when i see the linker generated map file, I see the symbols(unsed functions) names present in the map file.
Am I missing something? I want to completely remove the unused code.
How do I do this?
The compiler compiles C files one-at-a-time. Therefore, while compiling a C-file that does contains an unused function, the compiler cannot be sure that it will not be called from another file and hence it will compile that function too. However, if that function were declared as static (file-scope), then the compiler would know it is not used and hence remove it.
Even with whole program optimization, I think it would still not be done since the compilation could be for a library.
Linkers do something similar to what you are looking for. If your code links against a library containing multiple objects, then any objects that do not contain functions used by your code (directly or indirectly) would not be included in the final executable.
One option would be to separate your code into individual libraries and object files.
PS - This is just my guess. The behavior of the compiler (with whole program optimization) or linker essentially depends on the design choices of that particular compiler or linker
On our projects we have a flag set under the project properties\Linker\Refrences. We set it to Eliminate Unreferenced Data (/OPT:REF), according to the description this is supposed to remove function calls or data that are never used. I am just going by the description, I have never tested this or worked with it. But I just happened to see it within the last hour and figured it might be something you could try.
os i figured out how to use the -mthumb and -mno-thumb compiler flag and more or less understand what it's doing.
But what is the -mthumb-interlinking flag doing? when is it needed, and is it set for the whole project if i set 'compile for thumb' in my project settings?
thanks for the info!
Open a terminal and type man gcc
Do you mean -mthumb-interwork ?
-mthumb-interwork
Generate code which supports calling between the ARM and Thumb
instruction sets. Without this option the two instruction sets
cannot be reliably used inside one program. The default is
-mno-thumb-interwork, since slightly larger code is generated when
-mthumb-interwork is specified.
If this is related to a build configuration, you should be able to set it separately for each configuration "such as Release or Debug".
Why do you want to change these settings? I know using thumb instructions save some memory but will it save enough to matter in this case?
my application uses both, thumb and vfp code but i never specifically
set -thumb-interwork flag.. how is that possible?
According to man page, without that flag the two instructions sets
cannot be reliably used inside one program.
It says "reliably"; so without that option, it seems they still can be mixed within a single program but it might be "unreliably". I think normally mixing both instructions sets works, the compiler is smart enough to figure out when it has to switch from one set to another one. However, there might be border cases the compiler just doesn't understand correctly and it might fail to see that it should switch instruction sets here, causing the application to fail (most likely it will crash). This option generates special code, so that no matter what your code does, the switching always happens correctly and reliably; the downside is that this extra code is needed for every global visible function and thus increases the binary side (I have no idea if it also might slow down function calls a little bit, I personally would expect that).
Please also note the following two settings:
-mcallee-super-interworking
Gives all externally visible functions in the file being
compiled an ARM instruction set header
which switches to Thumb mode before executing the rest of
the function. This allows these
functions to be called from non-interworking code.
-mcaller-super-interworking
Allows calls via function pointers (including virtual
functions) to execute correctly regardless
of whether the target code has been compiled for
interworking or not. There is a small overhead
in the cost of executing a function pointer if this option
is enabled.
Though I think you only need those, when building libraries to be used with other projects; but I don't know for sure. The GCC thumb handling is definitely "underdocumented".