Shankar Chakkere's Blog

findref is one of the program I use on daily basis. It a small opensource program (a single C source file written by Mr. Brian Wilson) that can be complied with any decent C compiler. It finds all references to a string in a C/C++ files in current directory and its subdirectory.
e.g.

c:\wx\samples>findref -i wxarraystring
.\console\console.cpp(259):         wxArrayString args = wxCmdLineParser::ConvertStringToArgs(cmdline);
.\console\console.cpp(399):     wxArrayString files;
.\console\console.cpp(587):     wxArrayString output;
.\console\console.cpp(835):     wxArrayString dirs = fn.GetDirs();
.\console\console.cpp(1672):     wxArrayString mimetypes;
.\console\console.cpp(1678):     wxArrayString exts;
.\console\console.cpp(3206):     wxArrayString files;
.\console\console.cpp(3349):             wxArrayString files;
.\console\console.cpp(3815):     wxArrayString volumes = wxFSVolume::GetVolumes();
.\console\console.cpp(5622): static void PrintArray(const wxChar* name, const wxArrayString& array)
.\console\console.cpp(6260):         wxArrayString a1;
.\console\console.cpp(6272):         wxArrayString a2(a1);
.\dialogs\dialogs.cpp(516):         wxArrayString paths, filenames;
.\dialup\nettest.cpp(305):     wxArrayString names;
.\dnd\dnd.cpp(87):                              const wxArrayString& filenames);
.\dnd\dnd.cpp(1372):     wxArrayString filenames;
.\dnd\dnd.cpp(1481): bool DnDFile::OnDropFiles(wxCoord, wxCoord, const wxArrayString& filenames)
.\exec\exec.cpp(124):                     const wxArrayString& output,
.\exec\exec.cpp(684):         wxArrayString output, errors;
.\exec\exec.cpp(927):                          const wxArrayString& output,
.\font\font.cpp(345):     const wxArrayString& GetFacenames() const
.\font\font.cpp(356):         wxArrayString m_facenames;
.\listbox\lboxtest.cpp(524):     wxArrayString items;
.\listbox\lboxtest.cpp(635):     wxArrayString items;
.\mobile\wxedit\wxedit.h(60):     wxArrayString   m_history;
.\widgets\combobox.cpp(334):     wxArrayString items;
.\widgets\listbox.cpp(345):     wxArrayString items;
.\widgets\listbox.cpp(454):     wxArrayString items;
.\widgets\widgets.cpp(291):     wxArrayString labels;

Where -i is ignore case. It has many other options like not to span some directory.

I then use vim + line_number somefile.cpp to start editing the file.
Its also useful to find out how a variable is used in a project.

You can use grep along with find command, but findref is lot more convenient.

Next time I will write about how to use GNU ID utils, GLOBAL, Source Navigator and CSCOPE as C source tag system.

Labels: debug