Provided by: pcp_4.0.1-1_amd64 
NAME
pmcpp - simple preprocessor for the Performance Co-Pilot
SYNOPSIS
pmcpp [-Prs] [-D name[=value] ...] [-I dir ...] [infile]
DESCRIPTION
pmcpp provides a very simple pre-processor originally designed for manipulating
Performance Metric Name Space (PMNS) files for the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP), but later
generalized to provide conditional blocks, include file processing, in-line shell command
execution and macro substitution for arbitrary files. It is most commonly used internally
to process the PMNS file(s) after pmLoadNameSpace(3) or pmLoadASCIINameSpace(3) is called
and to pre-process the configuration files for pmlogger(1).
Input lines are read from infile (or standard input if infile is not specified), processed
and written to standard output.
All C-style comments of the form /* ... */ are stripped from the input stream.
There are no predefined macros for pmcpp although macros may be defined on the command
line using the -D option, where name and value must follow the same rules as described
below for the #define directive.
pmcpp accepts the following directives in the input stream (like cpp(1)):
• #include "filename"
or
#include <filename>
In either case the directory search path for filename tries filename first, then the
directory for the command line infile (if any), followed by any directories named in -I
command line arguments, and finally the $PCP_VAR_DIR/pmns directory (the latter is for
backwards compatibility with earlier versions of pmcpp and the implied used from
pmLoadASCIINameSpace(3)). #include directives may be nested, up to a maximum depth of
5.
• #shell "command"
or
#shell 'command'
The shell command will be executed and the standard output is inserted into the stream
of data to be processed by pmcpp. Functionally this is similar to a #include
directive, except input lines are read from a command rather than a file. The #shell
directive is most useful for including or excluding #define or #undef directives based
on run-time logic in the command.
• #define name value
or
#define name "value"
or
#define name 'value'
Defines a value for the macro name which must be a valid C-style name, so leading
alphabetic or underscore followed by zero or more alphanumerics or underscores. value
is optional (and defaults to an empty string). There is no character escape mechanism,
but either single quotes or double quotes may be used to define a value with special
characters or embedded horizontal white space (no newlines).
• #undef name
Removes the macro definition, if any, for name.
• #ifdef name
...
#endif
or
#ifndef name
...
#endif
The enclosing lines will be stripped or included, depending if the macro name is
defined or not.
• #else
Within a #ifdef or #ifndef block, #else may be used to delimit lines to be included if
the preceding ``if'' condition is false.
Macro substitution is achieved by breaking the input stream into words separated by white
space or characters that are not valid in a macro name, i.e. not alphanumeric and not
underscore. Each word is checked and if it matches a macro name, the word is replaced by
the macro value, otherwise the word is unchanged.
There is generally one output line for each input line, although the line may be empty if
the text has been stripped due to the handling of comments or conditional directives.
When there is a change in the input stream, an additional output line is generated of the
form:
# lineno "filename"
to indicate the following line of output corresponds to line number lineno of the input
file filename.
The -P argument suppresses the generation of these linemarker lines.
The -s argument changes the expected input style from C-like to shell-like (where # is a
comment prefix). This forces the following changes in pmcpp behaviour:
• The control prefix character changes from # to %, so %include for example.
• No comment stripping is performed.
To provide finer control of macro expansion, the -r option restricts macro substitution to
words that match the patterns #name or #{name} or if -s is specified, then %name or
%{name}. In this mode, the macro name alone in the input stream will never be expanded,
however in control lines (like #ifdef) the macro name should appear alone with out the
prefix character or the curly braces (refer to the EXAMPLES below).
Important cpp(1) features that are not supported by pmcpp include:
• Macros with parameters - the pmcpp macros support only parameterless string
substitution.
• #if expr
...
#endif
• Nested use of #ifdef or #ifndef.
• Stripping C++ style comments, as in // comment.
• Error recovery - the first error encountered by pmcpp will be fatal.
• cpp(1) command line options like -o, -W, -U, and -x.
EXAMPLES
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│Command: pmcpp │
├───────────────────────┬─────────────────────┤
│Input │ Output │
├───────────────────────┼─────────────────────┤
│ │ # 1 "<stdin>" │
│#define MYDOMAIN 27 │ │
│ │ │
│root { │ root { │
│ foo MYDOMAIN:0:0 │ foo 27:0:0 │
│} │ } │
└───────────────────────┴─────────────────────┘
For the following examples, the file frequencies contains the lines:
%define dk_freq 1minute
%define cpu_freq '15 sec'
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│Command: pmcpp -rs │
├──────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┤
│Input │ Output │
├──────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤
│# get logging frequencies │ # get logging frequencies │
│# e.g. dk_freq macro │ # e.g. dk_freq macro │
│%include "frequencies" │ │
│ │ │
│log mandatory on %dk_freq { │ log mandatory on 1minute { │
│ disk.dev │ disk.dev │
│} │ } │
│ │ │
│# note no % for want_cpu here │ # note no % for want_cpu here │
│%ifdef want_cpu │ │
│%define cpu_pfx 'kernel.all.cpu.' │ │
│log mandatory on %cpu_freq { │ │
│ %{cpu_pfx}user │ │
│ %{cpu_pfx}sys │ │
│} │ │
│%endif │ │
└──────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────┘
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│Command: pmcpp -rs -Dwant_cpu │
├──────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┤
│Input │ Output │
├──────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤
│# get logging frequencies │ # get logging frequencies │
│# e.g. dk_freq macro │ # e.g. dk_freq macro │
│%include "frequencies" │ │
│ │ │
│log mandatory on %dk_freq { │ log mandatory on 1minute { │
│ disk.dev │ disk.dev │
│} │ } │
│ │ │
│# note no % for want_cpu here │ # note no % for want_cpu here │
│%ifdef want_cpu │ │
│%define cpu_pfx 'kernel.all.cpu.' │ │
│log mandatory on %cpu_freq { │ log mandatory on 15 sec { │
│ %{cpu_pfx}user │ kernel.all.cpu.user │
│ %{cpu_pfx}sys │ kernel.all.cpu.sys │
│} │ } │
│%endif │ │
└──────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────┘
PCP ENVIRONMENT
Environment variables with the prefix PCP_ are used to parameterize the file and directory
names used by PCP. On each installation, the file /etc/pcp.conf contains the local values
for these variables. The $PCP_CONF variable may be used to specify an alternative
configuration file, as described in pcp.conf(5).
SEE ALSO
cpp(1), pmLoadASCIINameSpace(3), pmLoadNameSpace(3), pmns(5), pcp.conf(5) and pcp.env(5).