Provided by: perl-doc_5.40.0-8_all 
NAME
perlhacktips - Tips for Perl core C code hacking
DESCRIPTION
This document will help you learn the best way to go about hacking on the Perl core C
code. It covers common problems, debugging, profiling, and more.
If you haven't read perlhack and perlhacktut yet, you might want to do that first.
COMMON PROBLEMS
Perl source now permits some specific C99 features which we know are supported by all
platforms, but mostly plays by ANSI C89 rules. You don't care about some particular
platform having broken Perl? I hear there is still a strong demand for J2EE programmers.
Perl environment problems
• Not compiling with threading
Compiling with threading (-Duseithreads) completely rewrites the function prototypes
of Perl. You better try your changes with that. Related to this is the difference
between "Perl_-less" and "Perl_-ly" APIs, for example:
Perl_sv_setiv(aTHX_ ...);
sv_setiv(...);
The first one explicitly passes in the context, which is needed for e.g. threaded
builds. The second one does that implicitly; do not get them mixed. If you are not
passing in a aTHX_, you will need to do a dTHX as the first thing in the function.
See "How multiple interpreters and concurrency are supported" in perlguts for further
discussion about context.
• Not compiling with -DDEBUGGING
The DEBUGGING define exposes more code to the compiler, therefore more ways for things
to go wrong. You should try it.
• Introducing (non-read-only) globals
Do not introduce any modifiable globals, truly global or file static. They are bad
form and complicate multithreading and other forms of concurrency. The right way is
to introduce them as new interpreter variables, see intrpvar.h (at the very end for
binary compatibility).
Introducing read-only (const) globals is okay, as long as you verify with e.g. "nm
libperl.a|egrep -v ' [TURtr] '" (if your "nm" has BSD-style output) that the data you
added really is read-only. (If it is, it shouldn't show up in the output of that
command.)
If you want to have static strings, make them constant:
static const char etc[] = "...";
If you want to have arrays of constant strings, note carefully the right combination
of "const"s:
static const char * const yippee[] =
{"hi", "ho", "silver"};
• Not exporting your new function
Some platforms (Win32, AIX, VMS, OS/2, to name a few) require any function that is
part of the public API (the shared Perl library) to be explicitly marked as exported.
See the discussion about embed.pl in perlguts.
• Exporting your new function
The new shiny result of either genuine new functionality or your arduous refactoring
is now ready and correctly exported. So what could possibly go wrong?
Maybe simply that your function did not need to be exported in the first place. Perl
has a long and not so glorious history of exporting functions that it should not have.
If the function is used only inside one source code file, make it static. See the
discussion about embed.pl in perlguts.
If the function is used across several files, but intended only for Perl's internal
use (and this should be the common case), do not export it to the public API. See the
discussion about embed.pl in perlguts.
C99
Starting from 5.35.5 we now permit some C99 features in the core C source. However, code
in dual life extensions still needs to be C89 only, because it needs to compile against
earlier version of Perl running on older platforms. Also note that our headers need to
also be valid as C++, because XS extensions written in C++ need to include them, hence
member structure initialisers can't be used in headers.
C99 support is still far from complete on all platforms we currently support. As a
baseline we can only assume C89 semantics with the specific C99 features described below,
which we've verified work everywhere. It's fine to probe for additional C99 features and
use them where available, providing there is also a fallback for compilers that don't
support the feature. For example, we use C11 thread local storage when available, but
fall back to POSIX thread specific APIs otherwise, and we use "char" for booleans if
"<stdbool.h>" isn't available.
Code can use (and rely on) the following C99 features being present
• mixed declarations and code
• 64 bit integer types
For consistency with the existing source code, use the typedefs "I64" and "U64",
instead of using "long long" and "unsigned long long" directly.
• variadic macros
void greet(char *file, unsigned int line, char *format, ...);
#define logged_greet(...) greet(__FILE__, __LINE__, __VA_ARGS__);
Note that "__VA_OPT__" is standardized as of C23 and C++20. Before that it was a gcc
extension.
• declarations in for loops
for (const char *p = message; *p; ++p) {
putchar(*p);
}
• member structure initialisers
But not in headers, as support was only added to C++ relatively recently.
Hence this is fine in C and XS code, but not headers:
struct message {
char *action;
char *target;
};
struct message mcguffin = {
.target = "member structure initialisers",
.action = "Built"
};
You cannot use the similar syntax for compound literals, since we also build perl
using C++ compilers:
/* this is fine */
struct message m = {
.target = "some target",
.action = "some action"
};
/* this is not valid in C++ */
m = (struct message){
.target = "some target",
.action = "some action"
};
While structure designators are usable, the related array designators are not, since
they aren't supported by C++ at all.
• flexible array members
This is standards conformant:
struct greeting {
unsigned int len;
char message[];
};
However, the source code already uses the "unwarranted chumminess with the compiler"
hack in many places:
struct greeting {
unsigned int len;
char message[1];
};
Strictly it is undefined behaviour accessing beyond "message[0]", but this has been a
commonly used hack since K&R times, and using it hasn't been a practical issue
anywhere (in the perl source or any other common C code). Hence it's unclear what we
would gain from actively changing to the C99 approach.
• "//" comments
All compilers we tested support their use. Not all humans we tested support their use.
Code explicitly should not use any other C99 features. For example
• variable length arrays
Not supported by any MSVC, and this is not going to change.
Even "variable" length arrays where the variable is a constant expression are syntax
errors under MSVC.
• C99 types in "<stdint.h>"
Use "PERL_INT_FAST8_T" etc as defined in handy.h
• C99 format strings in "<inttypes.h>"
"snprintf" in the VMS libc only added support for "PRIdN" etc very recently, meaning
that there are live supported installations without this, or formats such as %zu.
(perl's "sv_catpvf" etc use parser code code in sv.c, which supports the "z" modifier,
along with perl-specific formats such as "SVf".)
If you want to use a C99 feature not listed above then you need to do one of
• Probe for it in Configure, set a variable in config.sh, and add fallback logic in the
headers for platforms which don't have it.
• Write test code and verify that it works on platforms we need to support, before
relying on it unconditionally.
Likely you want to repeat the same plan as we used to get the current C99 feature set. See
the message at <https://markmail.org/thread/odr4fjrn72u2fkpz> for the C99 probes we used
before. Note that the two most "fussy" compilers appear to be MSVC and the vendor compiler
on VMS. To date all the *nix compilers have been far more flexible in what they support.
On *nix platforms, Configure attempts to set compiler flags appropriately. All vendor
compilers that we tested defaulted to C99 (or C11) support. However, older versions of gcc
default to C89, or permit most C99 (with warnings), but forbid declarations in for loops
unless "-std=gnu99" is added. The alternative "-std=c99" might seem better, but using it
on some platforms can prevent "<unistd.h>" declaring some prototypes being declared, which
breaks the build. gcc's "-ansi" flag implies "-std=c89" so we can no longer set that,
hence the Configure option "-gccansipedantic" now only adds "-pedantic".
The Perl core source code files (the ones at the top level of the source code
distribution) are automatically compiled with as many as possible of the "-std=gnu99",
"-pedantic", and a selection of "-W" flags (see cflags.SH). Files in ext/ dist/ cpan/ etc
are compiled with the same flags as the installed perl would use to compile XS extensions.
Basically, it's safe to assume that Configure and cflags.SH have picked the best
combination of flags for the version of gcc on the platform, and attempting to add more
flags related to enforcing a C dialect will cause problems either locally, or on other
systems that the code is shipped to.
We believe that the C99 support in gcc 3.1 is good enough for us, but we don't have a 19
year old gcc handy to check this :-) If you have ancient vendor compilers that don't
default to C99, the flags you might want to try are
AIX "-qlanglvl=stdc99"
HP/UX
"-AC99"
Solaris
"-xc99"
Symbol Names and Namespace Pollution
Choosing legal symbol names
C reserves for its implementation any symbol whose name begins with an underscore followed
immediately by either an uppercase letter "[A-Z]" or another underscore. C++ further
reserves any symbol containing two consecutive underscores, and further reserves in the
global name space any symbol beginning with an underscore, not just ones followed by a
capital. We care about C++ because header files (*.h) need to be compilable by it, and
some people do all their development using a C++ compiler.
The consequences of failing to do this are probably none. Unless you stumble on a name
that the implementation uses, things will work. Indeed, the perl core has more than a few
instances of using implementation-reserved symbols. (These are gradually being changed.)
But your code might stop working any time that the implementation decides to use a name
you already had chosen, potentially many years before.
It's best then to:
Don't begin a symbol name with an underscore; (e.g., don't use: "_FOOBAR")
Don't use two consecutive underscores in a symbol name; (e.g., don't use "FOO__BAR")
POSIX also reserves many symbols. See Section 2.2.2 in
<https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/V2_chap02.html>. Perl also
has conflicts with that.
Perl reserves for its use any symbol beginning with "Perl", "perl", or "PL_". Any time
you introduce a macro into a header file that doesn't follow that convention, you are
creating the possiblity of a namespace clash with an existing XS module, unless you
restrict it by, say,
#ifdef PERL_CORE
# define my_symbol
#endif
There are many symbols in header files that aren't of this form, and which are accessible
from XS namespace, intentionally or not, just about anything in config.h, for example.
Having to use one of these prefixes detracts from the readability of the code, and hasn't
been an actual issue for non-trivial names. Things like perl defining its own "MAX" macro
have been problematic, but they were quickly discovered, and a "#ifdef PERL_CORE" guard
added.
So there's no rule imposed about using such symbols, just be aware of the issues.
Choosing good symbol names
Ideally, a symbol name name should correctly and precisely describe its intended purpose.
But there is a tension between that and getting names that are overly long and hence
awkward to type and read. Metaphors could be helpful (a poetic name), but those tend to
be culturally specific, and may not translate for someone whose native language isn't
English, or even comes from a different cultural background. Besides, the talent of
writing poetry seems to be rare in programmers.
Certain symbol names don't reflect their purpose, but are nonetheless fine to use because
of long-standing conventions. These often originated in the field of Mathematics, where
"i" and "j" are frequently used as subscripts, and "n" as a population count. Since at
least the 1950's, computer programs have used "i", etc. as loop variables.
Our guidance is to choose a name that reasonably describes the purpose, and to comment its
declaration more precisely.
One certainly shouldn't use misleading nor ambiguous names. "last_foo" could mean either
the final "foo" or the previous "foo", and so could be confusing to the reader, or even to
the writer coming back to the code after a few months of working on something else.
Sometimes the programmer has a particular line of thought in mind, and it doesn't occur to
them that ambiguity is present.
There are probably still many off-by-1 bugs around because the name ""av_len"" in perlapi
doesn't correspond to what other -len constructs mean, such as ""sv_len"" in perlapi.
Awkward (and controversial) synonyms were created to use instead that conveyed its true
meaning (""av_top_index"" in perlapi). Eventually, though, someone had the better idea to
create a new name to signify what most people think "-len" signifies. So ""av_count"" in
perlapi was born. And we wish it had been thought up much earlier.
Writing safer macros
Macros are used extensively in the Perl core for such things as hiding internal details
from the caller, so that it doesn't have to be concerned about them. For example, most
lines of code don't need to know if they are running on a threaded versus unthreaded perl.
That detail is automatically mostly hidden.
It is often better to use an inline function instead of a macro. They are immune to name
collisions with the caller, and don't magnify problems when called with parameters that
are expressions with side effects. There was a time when one might choose a macro over an
inline function because compiler support for inline functions was quite limited. Some
only would actually only inline the first two or three encountered in a compilation. But
those days are long gone, and inline functions are fully supported in modern compilers.
Nevertheless, there are situations where a function won't do, and a macro is required.
One example is when a parameter can be any of several types. A function has to be
declared with a single explicit
Or maybe the code involved is so trivial that a function would be just complicating
overkill, such as when the macro simply creates a mnemonic name for some constant value.
If you do choose to use a non-trivial macro, be aware that there are several avoidable
pitfalls that can occur. Keep in mind that a macro is expanded within the lexical context
of each place in the source it is called. If you have a token "foo" in the macro and the
source happens also to have "foo", the meaning of the macro's "foo" will become that of
the caller's. Sometimes that is exactly the behavior you want, but be aware that this
tends to be confusing later on. It effectively turns "foo" into a reserved word for any
code that calls the macro, and this fact is usually not documented nor considered. It is
safer to pass "foo" as a parameter, so that "foo" remains freely available to the caller
and the macro interface is explicitly specified.
Worse is when the equivalence between the two "foo"'s is coincidental. Suppose for
example, that the macro declares a variable
int foo
That works fine as long as the caller doesn't define the string "foo" in some way. And it
might not be until years later that someone comes along with an instance where "foo" is
used. For example a future caller could do this:
#define foo bar
Then that declaration of "foo" in the macro suddenly becomes
int bar
That could mean that something completely different happens than intended. It is hard to
debug; the macro and call may not even be in the same file, so it would require some
digging and gnashing of teeth to figure out.
Therefore, if a macro does use variables, their names should be such that it is very
unlikely that they would collide with any caller, now or forever. One way to do that, now
being used in the perl source, is to include the name of the macro itself as part of the
name of each variable in the macro. Suppose the macro is named "SvPV" Then we could have
int foo_svpv_ = 0;
This is harder to read than plain "foo", but it is pretty much guaranteed that a caller
will never naively use "foo_svpv_" (and run into problems). (The lowercasing makes it
clearer that this is a variable, but assumes that there won't be two elements whose names
differ only in the case of their letters.) The trailing underscore makes it even more
unlikely to clash, as those, by convention, signify a private variable name. (See
"Choosing legal symbol names" for restrictions on what names you can use.)
This kind of name collision doesn't happen with the macro's formal parameters, so they
don't need to have complicated names. But there are pitfalls when a a parameter is an
expression, or has some Perl magic attached. When calling a function, C will evaluate the
parameter once, and pass the result to the function. But when calling a macro, the
parameter is copied as-is by the C preprocessor to each instance inside the macro. This
means that when evaluating a parameter having side effects, the function and macro results
differ. This is particularly fraught when a parameter has overload magic, say it is a
tied variable that reads the next line in a file upon each evaluation. Having it read
multiple lines per call is probably not what the caller intended. If a macro refers to a
potentially overloadable parameter more than once, it should first make a copy and then
use that copy the rest of the time. There are macros in the perl core that violate this,
but are gradually being converted, usually by changing to use inline functions instead.
Above we said "first make a copy". In a macro, that is easier said than done, because
macros are normally expressions, and declarations aren't allowed in expressions. But the
"STMT_START" .. "STMT_END" construct, described in perlapi, allows you to have
declarations in most contexts, as long as you don't need a return value. If you do need a
value returned, you can make the interface such that a pointer is passed to the construct,
which then stores its result there. (Or you can use GCC brace groups. But these require
a fallback if the code will ever get executed on a platform that lacks this non-standard
extension to C. And that fallback would be another code path, which can get out-of-sync
with the brace group one, so doing this isn't advisable.) In situations where there's no
other way, Perl does furnish ""PL_Sv"" in perlintern and ""PL_na"" in perlapi to use (with
a slight performance penalty) for some such common cases. But beware that a call chain
involving multiple macros using them will zap the other's use. These have been very
difficult to debug.
For a concrete example of these pitfalls in action, see
<https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=11144355>.
Portability problems
The following are common causes of compilation and/or execution failures, not common to
Perl as such. The C FAQ is good bedtime reading. Please test your changes with as many C
compilers and platforms as possible; we will, anyway, and it's nice to save oneself from
public embarrassment.
Also study perlport carefully to avoid any bad assumptions about the operating system,
filesystems, character set, and so forth.
Do not assume an operating system indicates a certain compiler.
• Casting pointers to integers or casting integers to pointers
void castaway(U8* p)
{
IV i = p;
or
void castaway(U8* p)
{
IV i = (IV)p;
Both are bad, and broken, and unportable. Use the PTR2IV() macro that does it right.
(Likewise, there are PTR2UV(), PTR2NV(), INT2PTR(), and NUM2PTR().)
• Casting between function pointers and data pointers
Technically speaking casting between function pointers and data pointers is unportable
and undefined, but practically speaking it seems to work, but you should use the
FPTR2DPTR() and DPTR2FPTR() macros. Sometimes you can also play games with unions.
• Assuming "sizeof(int) == sizeof(long)"
There are platforms where longs are 64 bits, and platforms where ints are 64 bits, and
while we are out to shock you, even platforms where shorts are 64 bits. This is all
legal according to the C standard. (In other words, "long long" is not a portable way
to specify 64 bits, and "long long" is not even guaranteed to be any wider than
"long".)
Instead, use the definitions "IV", "UV", "IVSIZE", "I32SIZE", and so forth. Avoid
things like "I32" because they are not guaranteed to be exactly 32 bits, they are at
least 32 bits, nor are they guaranteed to be "int" or "long". If you explicitly need
64-bit variables, use "I64" and "U64".
• Assuming one can dereference any type of pointer for any type of data
char *p = ...;
long pony = *(long *)p; /* BAD */
Many platforms, quite rightly so, will give you a core dump instead of a pony if the p
happens not to be correctly aligned.
• Lvalue casts
(int)*p = ...; /* BAD */
Simply not portable. Get your lvalue to be of the right type, or maybe use temporary
variables, or dirty tricks with unions.
• Assume anything about structs (especially the ones you don't control, like the ones
coming from the system headers)
• That a certain field exists in a struct
• That no other fields exist besides the ones you know of
• That a field is of certain signedness, sizeof, or type
• That the fields are in a certain order
• While C guarantees the ordering specified in the struct definition,
between different platforms the definitions might differ
• That the sizeof(struct) or the alignments are the same everywhere
• There might be padding bytes between the fields to align the fields -
the bytes can be anything
• Structs are required to be aligned to the maximum alignment required
by the fields - which for native types is usually equivalent to
sizeof(the_field).
• Assuming the character set is ASCIIish
Perl can compile and run under EBCDIC platforms. See perlebcdic. This is transparent
for the most part, but because the character sets differ, you shouldn't use numeric
(decimal, octal, nor hex) constants to refer to characters. You can safely say 'A',
but not 0x41. You can safely say '\n', but not "\012". However, you can use macros
defined in utf8.h to specify any code point portably. LATIN1_TO_NATIVE(0xDF) is going
to be the code point that means LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S on whatever platform you
are running on (on ASCII platforms it compiles without adding any extra code, so there
is zero performance hit on those). The acceptable inputs to "LATIN1_TO_NATIVE" are
from 0x00 through 0xFF. If your input isn't guaranteed to be in that range, use
"UNICODE_TO_NATIVE" instead. "NATIVE_TO_LATIN1" and "NATIVE_TO_UNICODE" translate the
opposite direction.
If you need the string representation of a character that doesn't have a mnemonic name
in C, you should add it to the list in regen/unicode_constants.pl, and have Perl
create "#define"'s for you, based on the current platform.
Note that the "isFOO" and "toFOO" macros in handy.h work properly on native code
points and strings.
Also, the range 'A' - 'Z' in ASCII is an unbroken sequence of 26 upper case alphabetic
characters. That is not true in EBCDIC. Nor for 'a' to 'z'. But '0' - '9' is an
unbroken range in both systems. Don't assume anything about other ranges. (Note that
special handling of ranges in regular expression patterns and transliterations makes
it appear to Perl code that the aforementioned ranges are all unbroken.)
Many of the comments in the existing code ignore the possibility of EBCDIC, and may be
wrong therefore, even if the code works. This is actually a tribute to the successful
transparent insertion of being able to handle EBCDIC without having to change pre-
existing code.
UTF-8 and UTF-EBCDIC are two different encodings used to represent Unicode code points
as sequences of bytes. Macros with the same names (but different definitions) in
utf8.h and utfebcdic.h are used to allow the calling code to think that there is only
one such encoding. This is almost always referred to as "utf8", but it means the
EBCDIC version as well. Again, comments in the code may well be wrong even if the
code itself is right. For example, the concept of UTF-8 "invariant characters"
differs between ASCII and EBCDIC. On ASCII platforms, only characters that do not
have the high-order bit set (i.e. whose ordinals are strict ASCII, 0 - 127) are
invariant, and the documentation and comments in the code may assume that, often
referring to something like, say, "hibit". The situation differs and is not so simple
on EBCDIC machines, but as long as the code itself uses the NATIVE_IS_INVARIANT()
macro appropriately, it works, even if the comments are wrong.
As noted in "TESTING" in perlhack, when writing test scripts, the file
t/charset_tools.pl contains some helpful functions for writing tests valid on both
ASCII and EBCDIC platforms. Sometimes, though, a test can't use a function and it's
inconvenient to have different test versions depending on the platform. There are 20
code points that are the same in all 4 character sets currently recognized by Perl
(the 3 EBCDIC code pages plus ISO 8859-1 (ASCII/Latin1)). These can be used in such
tests, though there is a small possibility that Perl will become available in yet
another character set, breaking your test. All but one of these code points are C0
control characters. The most significant controls that are the same are "\0", "\r",
and "\N{VT}" (also specifiable as "\cK", "\x0B", "\N{U+0B}", or "\013"). The single
non-control is U+00B6 PILCROW SIGN. The controls that are the same have the same bit
pattern in all 4 character sets, regardless of the UTF8ness of the string containing
them. The bit pattern for U+B6 is the same in all 4 for non-UTF8 strings, but differs
in each when its containing string is UTF-8 encoded. The only other code points that
have some sort of sameness across all 4 character sets are the pair 0xDC and 0xFC.
Together these represent upper- and lowercase LATIN LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS, but which
is upper and which is lower may be reversed: 0xDC is the capital in Latin1 and 0xFC is
the small letter, while 0xFC is the capital in EBCDIC and 0xDC is the small one. This
factoid may be exploited in writing case insensitive tests that are the same across
all 4 character sets.
• Assuming the character set is just ASCII
ASCII is a 7 bit encoding, but bytes have 8 bits in them. The 128 extra characters
have different meanings depending on the locale. Absent a locale, currently these
extra characters are generally considered to be unassigned, and this has presented
some problems. This has being changed starting in 5.12 so that these characters can be
considered to be Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1).
• Mixing #define and #ifdef
#define BURGLE(x) ... \
#ifdef BURGLE_OLD_STYLE /* BAD */
... do it the old way ... \
#else
... do it the new way ... \
#endif
You cannot portably "stack" cpp directives. For example in the above you need two
separate BURGLE() #defines, one for each #ifdef branch.
• Adding non-comment stuff after #endif or #else
#ifdef SNOSH
...
#else !SNOSH /* BAD */
...
#endif SNOSH /* BAD */
The #endif and #else cannot portably have anything non-comment after them. If you
want to document what is going (which is a good idea especially if the branches are
long), use (C) comments:
#ifdef SNOSH
...
#else /* !SNOSH */
...
#endif /* SNOSH */
The gcc option "-Wendif-labels" warns about the bad variant (by default on starting
from Perl 5.9.4).
• Having a comma after the last element of an enum list
enum color {
CERULEAN,
CHARTREUSE,
CINNABAR, /* BAD */
};
is not portable. Leave out the last comma.
Also note that whether enums are implicitly morphable to ints varies between
compilers, you might need to (int).
• Mixing signed char pointers with unsigned char pointers
int foo(char *s) { ... }
...
unsigned char *t = ...; /* Or U8* t = ... */
foo(t); /* BAD */
While this is legal practice, it is certainly dubious, and downright fatal in at least
one platform: for example VMS cc considers this a fatal error. One cause for people
often making this mistake is that a "naked char" and therefore dereferencing a "naked
char pointer" have an undefined signedness: it depends on the compiler and the flags
of the compiler and the underlying platform whether the result is signed or unsigned.
For this very same reason using a 'char' as an array index is bad.
• Macros that have string constants and their arguments as substrings of the string
constants
#define FOO(n) printf("number = %d\n", n) /* BAD */
FOO(10);
Pre-ANSI semantics for that was equivalent to
printf("10umber = %d\10");
which is probably not what you were expecting. Unfortunately at least one reasonably
common and modern C compiler does "real backward compatibility" here, in AIX that is
what still happens even though the rest of the AIX compiler is very happily C89.
• Using printf formats for non-basic C types
IV i = ...;
printf("i = %d\n", i); /* BAD */
While this might by accident work in some platform (where IV happens to be an "int"),
in general it cannot. IV might be something larger. Even worse the situation is with
more specific types (defined by Perl's configuration step in config.h):
Uid_t who = ...;
printf("who = %d\n", who); /* BAD */
The problem here is that Uid_t might be not only not "int"-wide but it might also be
unsigned, in which case large uids would be printed as negative values.
There is no simple solution to this because of printf()'s limited intelligence, but
for many types the right format is available as with either 'f' or '_f' suffix, for
example:
IVdf /* IV in decimal */
UVxf /* UV is hexadecimal */
printf("i = %"IVdf"\n", i); /* The IVdf is a string constant. */
Uid_t_f /* Uid_t in decimal */
printf("who = %"Uid_t_f"\n", who);
Or you can try casting to a "wide enough" type:
printf("i = %"IVdf"\n", (IV)something_very_small_and_signed);
See "Formatted Printing of Size_t and SSize_t" in perlguts for how to print those.
Also remember that the %p format really does require a void pointer:
U8* p = ...;
printf("p = %p\n", (void*)p);
The gcc option "-Wformat" scans for such problems.
• Blindly passing va_list
Not all platforms support passing va_list to further varargs (stdarg) functions. The
right thing to do is to copy the va_list using the Perl_va_copy() if the NEED_VA_COPY
is defined.
• Using gcc statement expressions
val = ({...;...;...}); /* BAD */
While a nice extension, it's not portable. Historically, Perl used them in macros if
available to gain some extra speed (essentially as a funky form of inlining), but we
now support (or emulate) C99 "static inline" functions, so use them instead. Declare
functions as "PERL_STATIC_INLINE" to transparently fall back to emulation where
needed.
• Binding together several statements in a macro
Use the macros "STMT_START" and "STMT_END".
STMT_START {
...
} STMT_END
But there can be subtle (but avoidable if you do it right) bugs introduced with these;
see ""STMT_START"" in perlapi for best practices for their use.
• Testing for operating systems or versions when you should be testing for features
#ifdef __FOONIX__ /* BAD */
foo = quux();
#endif
Unless you know with 100% certainty that quux() is only ever available for the
"Foonix" operating system and that is available and correctly working for all past,
present, and future versions of "Foonix", the above is very wrong. This is more
correct (though still not perfect, because the below is a compile-time check):
#ifdef HAS_QUUX
foo = quux();
#endif
How does the HAS_QUUX become defined where it needs to be? Well, if Foonix happens to
be Unixy enough to be able to run the Configure script, and Configure has been taught
about detecting and testing quux(), the HAS_QUUX will be correctly defined. In other
platforms, the corresponding configuration step will hopefully do the same.
In a pinch, if you cannot wait for Configure to be educated, or if you have a good
hunch of where quux() might be available, you can temporarily try the following:
#if (defined(__FOONIX__) || defined(__BARNIX__))
# define HAS_QUUX
#endif
...
#ifdef HAS_QUUX
foo = quux();
#endif
But in any case, try to keep the features and operating systems separate.
A good resource on the predefined macros for various operating systems, compilers, and
so forth is <https://sourceforge.net/p/predef/wiki/Home/>.
• Assuming the contents of static memory pointed to by the return values of Perl
wrappers for C library functions doesn't change. Many C library functions return
pointers to static storage that can be overwritten by subsequent calls to the same or
related functions. Perl has wrappers for some of these functions. Originally many of
those wrappers returned those volatile pointers. But over time almost all of them
have evolved to return stable copies. To cope with the remaining ones, do a "savepv"
in perlapi to make a copy, thus avoiding these problems. You will have to free the
copy when you're done to avoid memory leaks. If you don't have control over when it
gets freed, you'll need to make the copy in a mortal scalar, like so
SvPVX(sv_2mortal(newSVpv(volatile_string, 0)))
Problematic System Interfaces
• Perl strings are NOT the same as C strings: They may contain "NUL" characters,
whereas a C string is terminated by the first "NUL". That is why Perl API functions
that deal with strings generally take a pointer to the first byte and either a length
or a pointer to the byte just beyond the final one.
And this is the reason that many of the C library string handling functions should not
be used. They don't cope with the full generality of Perl strings. It may be that
your test cases don't have embedded "NUL"s, and so the tests pass, whereas there may
well eventually arise real-world cases where they fail. A lesson here is to include
"NUL"s in your tests. Now it's fairly rare in most real world cases to get "NUL"s, so
your code may seem to work, until one day a "NUL" comes along.
Here's an example. It used to be a common paradigm, for decades, in the perl core to
use "strchr("list", c)" to see if the character "c" is any of the ones given in
"list", a double-quote-enclosed string of the set of characters that we are seeing if
"c" is one of. As long as "c" isn't a "NUL", it works. But when "c" is a "NUL",
"strchr" returns a pointer to the terminating "NUL" in "list". This likely will
result in a segfault or a security issue when the caller uses that end pointer as the
starting point to read from.
A solution to this and many similar issues is to use the "mem"-foo C library functions
instead. In this case "memchr" can be used to see if "c" is in "list" and works even
if "c" is "NUL". These functions need an additional parameter to give the string
length. In the case of literal string parameters, perl has defined macros that
calculate the length for you. See "String Handling" in perlapi.
• malloc(0), realloc(0), calloc(0, 0) are non-portable. To be portable allocate at
least one byte. (In general you should rarely need to work at this low level, but
instead use the various malloc wrappers.)
• snprintf() - the return type is unportable. Use my_snprintf() instead.
Security problems
Last but not least, here are various tips for safer coding. See also perlclib for
libc/stdio replacements one should use.
• Do not use gets()
Or we will publicly ridicule you. Seriously.
• Do not use tmpfile()
Use mkstemp() instead.
• Do not use strcpy() or strcat() or strncpy() or strncat()
Use my_strlcpy() and my_strlcat() instead: they either use the native implementation,
or Perl's own implementation (borrowed from the public domain implementation of INN).
• Do not use sprintf() or vsprintf()
If you really want just plain byte strings, use my_snprintf() and my_vsnprintf()
instead, which will try to use snprintf() and vsnprintf() if those safer APIs are
available. If you want something fancier than a plain byte string, use "Perl_form"()
or SVs and Perl_sv_catpvf().
Note that glibc printf(), sprintf(), etc. are buggy before glibc version 2.17. They
won't allow a "%.s" format with a precision to create a string that isn't valid UTF-8
if the current underlying locale of the program is UTF-8. What happens is that the %s
and its operand are simply skipped without any notice.
<https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=6530>.
• Do not use atoi()
Use grok_atoUV() instead. atoi() has ill-defined behavior on overflows, and cannot be
used for incremental parsing. It is also affected by locale, which is bad.
• Do not use strtol() or strtoul()
Use grok_atoUV() instead. strtol() or strtoul() (or their IV/UV-friendly macro
disguises, Strtol() and Strtoul(), or Atol() and Atoul() are affected by locale, which
is bad.
DEBUGGING
You can compile a special debugging version of Perl, which allows you to use the "-D"
option of Perl to tell more about what Perl is doing. But sometimes there is no
alternative than to dive in with a debugger, either to see the stack trace of a core dump
(very useful in a bug report), or trying to figure out what went wrong before the core
dump happened, or how did we end up having wrong or unexpected results.
Poking at Perl
To really poke around with Perl, you'll probably want to build Perl for debugging, like
this:
./Configure -d -DDEBUGGING
make
"-DDEBUGGING" turns on the C compiler's "-g" flag to have it produce debugging information
which will allow us to step through a running program, and to see in which C function we
are at (without the debugging information we might see only the numerical addresses of the
functions, which is not very helpful). It will also turn on the "DEBUGGING" compilation
symbol which enables all the internal debugging code in Perl. There are a whole bunch of
things you can debug with this: perlrun lists them all, and the best way to find out about
them is to play about with them. The most useful options are probably
l Context (loop) stack processing
s Stack snapshots (with v, displays all stacks)
t Trace execution
o Method and overloading resolution
c String/numeric conversions
For example
$ perl -Dst -e '$x + 1'
....
(-e:1) gvsv(main::x)
=> UNDEF
(-e:1) const(IV(1))
=> UNDEF IV(1)
(-e:1) add
=> NV(1)
Some of the functionality of the debugging code can be achieved with a non-debugging perl
by using XS modules:
-Dr => use re 'debug'
-Dx => use O 'Debug'
Using a source-level debugger
If the debugging output of "-D" doesn't help you, it's time to step through perl's
execution with a source-level debugger.
• We'll use "gdb" for our examples here; the principles will apply to any debugger (many
vendors call their debugger "dbx"), but check the manual of the one you're using.
To fire up the debugger, type
gdb ./perl
Or if you have a core dump:
gdb ./perl core
You'll want to do that in your Perl source tree so the debugger can read the source code.
You should see the copyright message, followed by the prompt.
(gdb)
"help" will get you into the documentation, but here are the most useful commands:
• run [args]
Run the program with the given arguments.
• break function_name
• break source.c:xxx
Tells the debugger that we'll want to pause execution when we reach either the named
function (but see "Internal Functions" in perlguts!) or the given line in the named
source file.
• step
Steps through the program a line at a time.
• next
Steps through the program a line at a time, without descending into functions.
• continue
Run until the next breakpoint.
• finish
Run until the end of the current function, then stop again.
• 'enter'
Just pressing Enter will do the most recent operation again - it's a blessing when
stepping through miles of source code.
• ptype
Prints the C definition of the argument given.
(gdb) ptype PL_op
type = struct op {
OP *op_next;
OP *op_sibparent;
OP *(*op_ppaddr)(void);
PADOFFSET op_targ;
unsigned int op_type : 9;
unsigned int op_opt : 1;
unsigned int op_slabbed : 1;
unsigned int op_savefree : 1;
unsigned int op_static : 1;
unsigned int op_folded : 1;
unsigned int op_spare : 2;
U8 op_flags;
U8 op_private;
} *
• print
Execute the given C code and print its results. WARNING: Perl makes heavy use of
macros, and gdb does not necessarily support macros (see later "gdb macro support").
You'll have to substitute them yourself, or to invoke cpp on the source code files (see
"The .i Targets") So, for instance, you can't say
print SvPV_nolen(sv)
but you have to say
print Perl_sv_2pv_nolen(sv)
You may find it helpful to have a "macro dictionary", which you can produce by saying "cpp
-dM perl.c | sort". Even then, cpp won't recursively apply those macros for you.
gdb macro support
Recent versions of gdb have fairly good macro support, but in order to use it you'll need
to compile perl with macro definitions included in the debugging information. Using gcc
version 3.1, this means configuring with "-Doptimize=-g3". Other compilers might use a
different switch (if they support debugging macros at all).
Dumping Perl Data Structures
One way to get around this macro hell is to use the dumping functions in dump.c; these
work a little like an internal Devel::Peek, but they also cover OPs and other structures
that you can't get at from Perl. Let's take an example. We'll use the "$x = $y + $z" we
used before, but give it a bit of context: "$y = "6XXXX"; $z = 2.3;". Where's a good
place to stop and poke around?
What about "pp_add", the function we examined earlier to implement the "+" operator:
(gdb) break Perl_pp_add
Breakpoint 1 at 0x46249f: file pp_hot.c, line 309.
Notice we use "Perl_pp_add" and not "pp_add" - see "Internal Functions" in perlguts. With
the breakpoint in place, we can run our program:
(gdb) run -e '$y = "6XXXX"; $z = 2.3; $x = $y + $z'
Lots of junk will go past as gdb reads in the relevant source files and libraries, and
then:
Breakpoint 1, Perl_pp_add () at pp_hot.c:309
1396 dSP; dATARGET; bool useleft; SV *svl, *svr;
(gdb) step
311 dPOPTOPnnrl_ul;
(gdb)
We looked at this bit of code before, and we said that "dPOPTOPnnrl_ul" arranges for two
"NV"s to be placed into "left" and "right" - let's slightly expand it:
#define dPOPTOPnnrl_ul NV right = POPn; \
SV *leftsv = TOPs; \
NV left = USE_LEFT(leftsv) ? SvNV(leftsv) : 0.0
"POPn" takes the SV from the top of the stack and obtains its NV either directly (if
"SvNOK" is set) or by calling the "sv_2nv" function. "TOPs" takes the next SV from the
top of the stack - yes, "POPn" uses "TOPs" - but doesn't remove it. We then use "SvNV" to
get the NV from "leftsv" in the same way as before - yes, "POPn" uses "SvNV".
Since we don't have an NV for $y, we'll have to use "sv_2nv" to convert it. If we step
again, we'll find ourselves there:
(gdb) step
Perl_sv_2nv (sv=0xa0675d0) at sv.c:1669
1669 if (!sv)
(gdb)
We can now use "Perl_sv_dump" to investigate the SV:
(gdb) print Perl_sv_dump(sv)
SV = PV(0xa057cc0) at 0xa0675d0
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (POK,pPOK)
PV = 0xa06a510 "6XXXX"\0
CUR = 5
LEN = 6
$1 = void
We know we're going to get 6 from this, so let's finish the subroutine:
(gdb) finish
Run till exit from #0 Perl_sv_2nv (sv=0xa0675d0) at sv.c:1671
0x462669 in Perl_pp_add () at pp_hot.c:311
311 dPOPTOPnnrl_ul;
We can also dump out this op: the current op is always stored in "PL_op", and we can dump
it with "Perl_op_dump". This'll give us similar output to CPAN module B::Debug.
(gdb) print Perl_op_dump(PL_op)
{
13 TYPE = add ===> 14
TARG = 1
FLAGS = (SCALAR,KIDS)
{
TYPE = null ===> (12)
(was rv2sv)
FLAGS = (SCALAR,KIDS)
{
11 TYPE = gvsv ===> 12
FLAGS = (SCALAR)
GV = main::b
}
}
# finish this later #
Using gdb to look at specific parts of a program
With the example above, you knew to look for "Perl_pp_add", but what if there were
multiple calls to it all over the place, or you didn't know what the op was you were
looking for?
One way to do this is to inject a rare call somewhere near what you're looking for. For
example, you could add "study" before your method:
study;
And in gdb do:
(gdb) break Perl_pp_study
And then step until you hit what you're looking for. This works well in a loop if you
want to only break at certain iterations:
for my $i (1..100) {
study if $i == 50;
}
Using gdb to look at what the parser/lexer are doing
If you want to see what perl is doing when parsing/lexing your code, you can use "BEGIN
{}":
print "Before\n";
BEGIN { study; }
print "After\n";
And in gdb:
(gdb) break Perl_pp_study
If you want to see what the parser/lexer is doing inside of "if" blocks and the like you
need to be a little trickier:
if ($x && $y && do { BEGIN { study } 1 } && $z) { ... }
SOURCE CODE STATIC ANALYSIS
Various tools exist for analysing C source code statically, as opposed to dynamically,
that is, without executing the code. It is possible to detect resource leaks, undefined
behaviour, type mismatches, portability problems, code paths that would cause illegal
memory accesses, and other similar problems by just parsing the C code and looking at the
resulting graph, what does it tell about the execution and data flows. As a matter of
fact, this is exactly how C compilers know to give warnings about dubious code.
lint
The good old C code quality inspector, "lint", is available in several platforms, but
please be aware that there are several different implementations of it by different
vendors, which means that the flags are not identical across different platforms.
There is a "lint" target in Makefile, but you may have to diddle with the flags (see
above).
Coverity
Coverity (<https://www.coverity.com/>) is a product similar to lint and as a testbed for
their product they periodically check several open source projects, and they give out
accounts to open source developers to the defect databases.
There is Coverity setup for the perl5 project: <https://scan.coverity.com/projects/perl5>
HP-UX cadvise (Code Advisor)
HP has a C/C++ static analyzer product for HP-UX caller Code Advisor. (Link not given
here because the URL is horribly long and seems horribly unstable; use the search engine
of your choice to find it.) The use of the "cadvise_cc" recipe with "Configure ...
-Dcc=./cadvise_cc" (see cadvise "User Guide") is recommended; as is the use of "+wall".
cpd (cut-and-paste detector)
The cpd tool detects cut-and-paste coding. If one instance of the cut-and-pasted code
changes, all the other spots should probably be changed, too. Therefore such code should
probably be turned into a subroutine or a macro.
cpd (<https://docs.pmd-code.org/latest/pmd_userdocs_cpd.html>) is part of the pmd project
(<https://pmd.github.io/>). pmd was originally written for static analysis of Java code,
but later the cpd part of it was extended to parse also C and C++.
Download the pmd-bin-X.Y.zip () from the SourceForge site, extract the pmd-X.Y.jar from
it, and then run that on source code thusly:
java -cp pmd-X.Y.jar net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.CPD \
--minimum-tokens 100 --files /some/where/src --language c > cpd.txt
You may run into memory limits, in which case you should use the -Xmx option:
java -Xmx512M ...
gcc warnings
Though much can be written about the inconsistency and coverage problems of gcc warnings
(like "-Wall" not meaning "all the warnings", or some common portability problems not
being covered by "-Wall", or "-ansi" and "-pedantic" both being a poorly defined
collection of warnings, and so forth), gcc is still a useful tool in keeping our coding
nose clean.
The "-Wall" is by default on.
It would be nice for "-pedantic") to be on always, but unfortunately it is not safe on all
platforms - for example fatal conflicts with the system headers (Solaris being a prime
example). If Configure "-Dgccansipedantic" is used, the "cflags" frontend selects
"-pedantic" for the platforms where it is known to be safe.
The following extra flags are added:
• "-Wendif-labels"
• "-Wextra"
• "-Wc++-compat"
• "-Wwrite-strings"
• "-Werror=pointer-arith"
• "-Werror=vla"
The following flags would be nice to have but they would first need their own Augean
stablemaster:
• "-Wshadow"
• "-Wstrict-prototypes"
The "-Wtraditional" is another example of the annoying tendency of gcc to bundle a lot of
warnings under one switch (it would be impossible to deploy in practice because it would
complain a lot) but it does contain some warnings that would be beneficial to have
available on their own, such as the warning about string constants inside macros
containing the macro arguments: this behaved differently pre-ANSI than it does in ANSI,
and some C compilers are still in transition, AIX being an example.
Warnings of other C compilers
Other C compilers (yes, there are other C compilers than gcc) often have their "strict
ANSI" or "strict ANSI with some portability extensions" modes on, like for example the Sun
Workshop has its "-Xa" mode on (though implicitly), or the DEC (these days, HP...) has its
"-std1" mode on.
MEMORY DEBUGGERS
NOTE 1: Running under older memory debuggers such as Purify, valgrind or Third Degree
greatly slows down the execution: seconds become minutes, minutes become hours. For
example as of Perl 5.8.1, the ext/Encode/t/Unicode.t test takes extraordinarily long to
complete under e.g. Purify, Third Degree, and valgrind. Under valgrind it takes more than
six hours, even on a snappy computer. Said test must be doing something that is quite
unfriendly for memory debuggers. If you don't feel like waiting, you can simply kill the
perl process. Roughly valgrind slows down execution by factor 10, AddressSanitizer by
factor 2.
NOTE 2: To minimize the number of memory leak false alarms (see "PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL" for
more information), you have to set the environment variable "PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL" to 2.
For example, like this:
env PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL=2 valgrind ./perl -Ilib ...
NOTE 3: There are known memory leaks when there are compile-time errors within "eval" or
"require"; seeing "S_doeval" in the call stack is a good sign of these. Fixing these
leaks is non-trivial, unfortunately, but they must be fixed eventually.
NOTE 4: DynaLoader will not clean up after itself completely unless Perl is built with the
Configure option "-Accflags=-DDL_UNLOAD_ALL_AT_EXIT".
valgrind
The valgrind tool can be used to find out both memory leaks and illegal heap memory
accesses. As of version 3.3.0, Valgrind only supports Linux on x86, x86-64 and PowerPC
and Darwin (OS X) on x86 and x86-64. The special "test.valgrind" target can be used to
run the tests under valgrind. Found errors and memory leaks are logged in files named
testfile.valgrind and by default output is displayed inline.
Example usage:
make test.valgrind
Since valgrind adds significant overhead, tests will take much longer to run. The
valgrind tests support being run in parallel to help with this:
TEST_JOBS=9 make test.valgrind
Note that the above two invocations will be very verbose as reachable memory and leak-
checking is enabled by default. If you want to just see pure errors, try:
VG_OPTS='-q --leak-check=no --show-reachable=no' TEST_JOBS=9 \
make test.valgrind
Valgrind also provides a cachegrind tool, invoked on perl as:
VG_OPTS=--tool=cachegrind make test.valgrind
As system libraries (most notably glibc) are also triggering errors, valgrind allows to
suppress such errors using suppression files. The default suppression file that comes
with valgrind already catches a lot of them. Some additional suppressions are defined in
t/perl.supp.
To get valgrind and for more information see <https://valgrind.org/>.
AddressSanitizer
AddressSanitizer ("ASan") consists of a compiler instrumentation module and a run-time
"malloc" library. ASan is available for a variety of architectures, operating systems, and
compilers (see project link below). It checks for unsafe memory usage, such as use after
free and buffer overflow conditions, and is fast enough that you can easily compile your
debugging or optimized perl with it. Modern versions of ASan check for memory leaks by
default on most platforms, otherwise (e.g. x86_64 OS X) this feature can be enabled via
"ASAN_OPTIONS=detect_leaks=1".
To build perl with AddressSanitizer, your Configure invocation should look like:
sh Configure -des -Dcc=clang \
-Accflags=-fsanitize=address -Aldflags=-fsanitize=address \
-Alddlflags=-shared\ -fsanitize=address \
-fsanitize-blacklist=`pwd`/asan_ignore
where these arguments mean:
• -Dcc=clang
This should be replaced by the full path to your clang executable if it is not in your
path.
• -Accflags=-fsanitize=address
Compile perl and extensions sources with AddressSanitizer.
• -Aldflags=-fsanitize=address
Link the perl executable with AddressSanitizer.
• -Alddlflags=-shared\ -fsanitize=address
Link dynamic extensions with AddressSanitizer. You must manually specify "-shared"
because using "-Alddlflags=-shared" will prevent Configure from setting a default
value for "lddlflags", which usually contains "-shared" (at least on Linux).
• -fsanitize-blacklist=`pwd`/asan_ignore
AddressSanitizer will ignore functions listed in the "asan_ignore" file. (This file
should contain a short explanation of why each of the functions is listed.)
See also <https://github.com/google/sanitizers/wiki/AddressSanitizer>.
Dr Memory
Dr. Memory is a tool similar to valgrind which is usable on Windows and Linux.
It supports heap checking like "memcheck" from valgrind. There are also other tools
included.
See <https://drmemory.org/>.
PROFILING
Depending on your platform there are various ways of profiling Perl.
There are two commonly used techniques of profiling executables: statistical time-sampling
and basic-block counting.
The first method takes periodically samples of the CPU program counter, and since the
program counter can be correlated with the code generated for functions, we get a
statistical view of in which functions the program is spending its time. The caveats are
that very small/fast functions have lower probability of showing up in the profile, and
that periodically interrupting the program (this is usually done rather frequently, in the
scale of milliseconds) imposes an additional overhead that may skew the results. The
first problem can be alleviated by running the code for longer (in general this is a good
idea for profiling), the second problem is usually kept in guard by the profiling tools
themselves.
The second method divides up the generated code into basic blocks. Basic blocks are
sections of code that are entered only in the beginning and exited only at the end. For
example, a conditional jump starts a basic block. Basic block profiling usually works by
instrumenting the code by adding enter basic block #nnnn book-keeping code to the
generated code. During the execution of the code the basic block counters are then
updated appropriately. The caveat is that the added extra code can skew the results:
again, the profiling tools usually try to factor their own effects out of the results.
Gprof Profiling
gprof is a profiling tool available in many Unix platforms which uses statistical time-
sampling. You can build a profiled version of perl by compiling using gcc with the flag
"-pg". Either edit config.sh or re-run Configure. Running the profiled version of Perl
will create an output file called gmon.out which contains the profiling data collected
during the execution.
quick hint:
$ sh Configure -des -Dusedevel -Accflags='-pg' \
-Aldflags='-pg' -Alddlflags='-pg -shared' \
&& make perl
$ ./perl ... # creates gmon.out in current directory
$ gprof ./perl > out
$ less out
(you probably need to add "-shared" to the <-Alddlflags> line until RT #118199 is
resolved)
The gprof tool can then display the collected data in various ways. Usually gprof
understands the following options:
• -a
Suppress statically defined functions from the profile.
• -b
Suppress the verbose descriptions in the profile.
• -e routine
Exclude the given routine and its descendants from the profile.
• -f routine
Display only the given routine and its descendants in the profile.
• -s
Generate a summary file called gmon.sum which then may be given to subsequent gprof
runs to accumulate data over several runs.
• -z
Display routines that have zero usage.
For more detailed explanation of the available commands and output formats, see your own
local documentation of gprof.
GCC gcov Profiling
basic block profiling is officially available in gcc 3.0 and later. You can build a
profiled version of perl by compiling using gcc with the flags "-fprofile-arcs
-ftest-coverage". Either edit config.sh or re-run Configure.
quick hint:
$ sh Configure -des -Dusedevel -Doptimize='-g' \
-Accflags='-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage' \
-Aldflags='-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage' \
-Alddlflags='-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage -shared' \
&& make perl
$ rm -f regexec.c.gcov regexec.gcda
$ ./perl ...
$ gcov regexec.c
$ less regexec.c.gcov
(you probably need to add "-shared" to the <-Alddlflags> line until RT #118199 is
resolved)
Running the profiled version of Perl will cause profile output to be generated. For each
source file an accompanying .gcda file will be created.
To display the results you use the gcov utility (which should be installed if you have gcc
3.0 or newer installed). gcov is run on source code files, like this
gcov sv.c
which will cause sv.c.gcov to be created. The .gcov files contain the source code
annotated with relative frequencies of execution indicated by "#" markers. If you want to
generate .gcov files for all profiled object files, you can run something like this:
for file in `find . -name \*.gcno`
do sh -c "cd `dirname $file` && gcov `basename $file .gcno`"
done
Useful options of gcov include "-b" which will summarise the basic block, branch, and
function call coverage, and "-c" which instead of relative frequencies will use the actual
counts. For more information on the use of gcov and basic block profiling with gcc, see
the latest GNU CC manual. As of gcc 4.8, this is at
<https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Gcov-Intro.html#Gcov-Intro>.
callgrind profiling
callgrind is a valgrind tool for profiling source code. Paired with kcachegrind (a Qt
based UI), it gives you an overview of where code is taking up time, as well as the
ability to examine callers, call trees, and more. One of its benefits is you can use it on
perl and XS modules that have not been compiled with debugging symbols.
If perl is compiled with debugging symbols ("-g"), you can view the annotated source and
click around, much like Devel::NYTProf's HTML output.
For basic usage:
valgrind --tool=callgrind ./perl ...
By default it will write output to callgrind.out.PID, but you can change that with
"--callgrind-out-file=..."
To view the data, do:
kcachegrind callgrind.out.PID
If you'd prefer to view the data in a terminal, you can use callgrind_annotate. In its
basic form:
callgrind_annotate callgrind.out.PID | less
Some useful options are:
• --threshold
Percentage of counts (of primary sort event) we are interested in. The default is 99%,
100% might show things that seem to be missing.
• --auto
Annotate all source files containing functions that helped reach the event count
threshold.
"profiler" profiling (Cygwin)
Cygwin allows for "gprof" profiling and "gcov" coverage testing, but this only profiles
the main executable.
You can use the "profiler" tool to perform sample based profiling, it requires no special
preparation of the executables beyond debugging symbols.
This produces sampling data which can be processed with "gprof".
There is limited documentation <https://www.cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/profiler.html> on the
Cygwin web site.
Visual Studio Profiling
You can use the Visual Studio profiler to profile perl if you've built perl with MSVC,
even though we build perl at the command-line. You will need to build perl with
"CFG=Debug" or "CFG=DebugSymbols".
The Visual Studio profiler is a sampling profiler.
See the visual studio documentation <https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/visualstudio-
docs/blob/main/docs/profiling/beginners-guide-to-performance-profiling.md> to get started.
MISCELLANEOUS TRICKS
PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL
If you want to run any of the tests yourself manually using e.g. valgrind, please note
that by default perl does not explicitly clean up all the memory it has allocated (such as
global memory arenas) but instead lets the exit() of the whole program "take care" of such
allocations, also known as "global destruction of objects".
There is a way to tell perl to do complete cleanup: set the environment variable
"PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL" to a non-zero value. The t/TEST wrapper does set this to 2, and
this is what you need to do too, if you don't want to see the "global leaks": For example,
for running under valgrind
env PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL=2 valgrind ./perl -Ilib t/foo/bar.t
(Note: the mod_perl Apache module uses this environment variable for its own purposes and
extends its semantics. Refer to the mod_perl documentation
<https://perl.apache.org/docs/> for more information. Also, spawned threads do the
equivalent of setting this variable to the value 1.)
If, at the end of a run, you get the message N scalars leaked, you can recompile with
"-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS" ("Configure -Accflags=-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS"), which will
cause the addresses of all those leaked SVs to be dumped along with details as to where
each SV was originally allocated. This information is also displayed by Devel::Peek.
Note that the extra details recorded with each SV increase memory usage, so it shouldn't
be used in production environments. It also converts new_SV() from a macro into a real
function, so you can use your favourite debugger to discover where those pesky SVs were
allocated.
If you see that you're leaking memory at runtime, but neither valgrind nor
"-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS" will find anything, you're probably leaking SVs that are still
reachable and will be properly cleaned up during destruction of the interpreter. In such
cases, using the "-Dm" switch can point you to the source of the leak. If the executable
was built with "-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS", "-Dm" will output SV allocations in addition to
memory allocations. Each SV allocation has a distinct serial number that will be written
on creation and destruction of the SV. So if you're executing the leaking code in a loop,
you need to look for SVs that are created, but never destroyed between each cycle. If
such an SV is found, set a conditional breakpoint within new_SV() and make it break only
when "PL_sv_serial" is equal to the serial number of the leaking SV. Then you will catch
the interpreter in exactly the state where the leaking SV is allocated, which is
sufficient in many cases to find the source of the leak.
As "-Dm" is using the PerlIO layer for output, it will by itself allocate quite a bunch of
SVs, which are hidden to avoid recursion. You can bypass the PerlIO layer if you use the
SV logging provided by "-DPERL_MEM_LOG" instead.
Leaked SV spotting: sv_mark_arenas() and sv_sweep_arenas()
These functions exist only on "DEBUGGING" builds. The first marks all live SVs which can
be found in the SV arenas with the "SVf_BREAK" flag. The second lists any such SVs which
don't have the flag set, and resets the flag on the rest. They are intended to identify
SVs which are being created, but not freed, between two points in code. They can be used
either by temporarily adding calls to them in the relevant places in the code, or by
calling them directly from a debugger.
For example, suppose the following code was found to be leaking:
while (1) { eval '\(1..3)' }
A gdb session on a threaded perl might look something like this:
$ gdb ./perl
(gdb) break Perl_pp_entereval
(gdb) run -e'while (1) { eval q{\(1..3)} }'
...
Breakpoint 1, Perl_pp_entereval ....
(gdb) call Perl_sv_mark_arenas(my_perl)
(gdb) continue
...
Breakpoint 1, Perl_pp_entereval ....`
(gdb) call Perl_sv_sweep_arenas(my_perl)
Unmarked SV: 0xaf23a8: AV()
Unmarked SV: 0xaf2408: IV(1)
Unmarked SV: 0xaf2468: IV(2)
Unmarked SV: 0xaf24c8: IV(3)
Unmarked SV: 0xace6c8: PV("AV()"\0)
Unmarked SV: 0xace848: PV("IV(1)"\0)
(gdb)
Here, at the start of the first call to pp_entereval(), all existing SVs are marked. Then
at the start of the second call, we list all the SVs which have been since been created
but not yet freed. It is quickly clear that an array and its three elements are likely not
being freed, perhaps as a result of a bug during constant folding. The final two SVs are
just temporaries created during the debugging output and can be ignored.
This trick relies on the "SVf_BREAK" flag not otherwise being used. This flag is typically
used only during global destruction, but also sometimes for a mark and sweep operation
when looking for common elements on the two sides of a list assignment. The presence of
the flag can also alter the behaviour of some specific actions in the core, such as
choosing whether to copy or to COW a string SV. So turning it on can occasionally alter
the behaviour of code slightly.
PERL_MEM_LOG
If compiled with "-DPERL_MEM_LOG" ("-Accflags=-DPERL_MEM_LOG"), both memory and SV
allocations go through logging functions, which is handy for breakpoint setting.
Unless "-DPERL_MEM_LOG_NOIMPL" ("-Accflags=-DPERL_MEM_LOG_NOIMPL") is also compiled, the
logging functions read $ENV{PERL_MEM_LOG} to determine whether to log the event, and if so
how:
$ENV{PERL_MEM_LOG} =~ /m/ Log all memory ops
$ENV{PERL_MEM_LOG} =~ /s/ Log all SV ops
$ENV{PERL_MEM_LOG} =~ /c/ Additionally log C backtrace for
new_SV events
$ENV{PERL_MEM_LOG} =~ /t/ include timestamp in Log
$ENV{PERL_MEM_LOG} =~ /^(\d+)/ write to FD given (default is 2)
Memory logging is somewhat similar to "-Dm" but is independent of "-DDEBUGGING", and at a
higher level; all uses of Newx(), Renew(), and Safefree() are logged with the caller's
source code file and line number (and C function name, if supported by the C compiler).
In contrast, "-Dm" is directly at the point of malloc(). SV logging is similar.
Since the logging doesn't use PerlIO, all SV allocations are logged and no extra SV
allocations are introduced by enabling the logging. If compiled with
"-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS", the serial number for each SV allocation is also logged.
The "c" option uses the "Perl_c_backtrace" facility, and therefore additionally requires
the Configure "-Dusecbacktrace" compile flag in order to access it.
DDD over gdb
Those debugging perl with the DDD frontend over gdb may find the following useful:
You can extend the data conversion shortcuts menu, so for example you can display an SV's
IV value with one click, without doing any typing. To do that simply edit ~/.ddd/init
file and add after:
! Display shortcuts.
Ddd*gdbDisplayShortcuts: \
/t () // Convert to Bin\n\
/d () // Convert to Dec\n\
/x () // Convert to Hex\n\
/o () // Convert to Oct(\n\
the following two lines:
((XPV*) (())->sv_any )->xpv_pv // 2pvx\n\
((XPVIV*) (())->sv_any )->xiv_iv // 2ivx
so now you can do ivx and pvx lookups or you can plug there the sv_peek "conversion":
Perl_sv_peek(my_perl, (SV*)()) // sv_peek
(The my_perl is for threaded builds.) Just remember that every line, but the last one,
should end with \n\
Alternatively edit the init file interactively via: 3rd mouse button -> New Display ->
Edit Menu
Note: you can define up to 20 conversion shortcuts in the gdb section.
C backtrace
On some platforms Perl supports retrieving the C level backtrace (similar to what symbolic
debuggers like gdb do).
The backtrace returns the stack trace of the C call frames, with the symbol names
(function names), the object names (like "perl"), and if it can, also the source code
locations (file:line).
The supported platforms are Linux, and OS X (some *BSD might work at least partly, but
they have not yet been tested).
This feature hasn't been tested with multiple threads, but it will only show the backtrace
of the thread doing the backtracing.
The feature needs to be enabled with "Configure -Dusecbacktrace".
The "-Dusecbacktrace" also enables keeping the debug information when compiling/linking
(often: "-g"). Many compilers/linkers do support having both optimization and keeping the
debug information. The debug information is needed for the symbol names and the source
locations.
Static functions might not be visible for the backtrace.
Source code locations, even if available, can often be missing or misleading if the
compiler has e.g. inlined code. Optimizer can make matching the source code and the
object code quite challenging.
Linux
You must have the BFD (-lbfd) library installed, otherwise "perl" will fail to link.
The BFD is usually distributed as part of the GNU binutils.
Summary: "Configure ... -Dusecbacktrace" and you need "-lbfd".
OS X
The source code locations are supported only if you have the Developer Tools
installed. (BFD is not needed.)
Summary: "Configure ... -Dusecbacktrace" and installing the Developer Tools would be
good.
Optionally, for trying out the feature, you may want to enable automatic dumping of the
backtrace just before a warning or croak (die) message is emitted, by adding
"-Accflags=-DUSE_C_BACKTRACE_ON_ERROR" for Configure.
Unless the above additional feature is enabled, nothing about the backtrace functionality
is visible, except for the Perl/XS level.
Furthermore, even if you have enabled this feature to be compiled, you need to enable it
in runtime with an environment variable: "PERL_C_BACKTRACE_ON_ERROR=10". It must be an
integer higher than zero, telling the desired frame count.
Retrieving the backtrace from Perl level (using for example an XS extension) would be much
less exciting than one would hope: normally you would see "runops", "entersub", and not
much else. This API is intended to be called from within the Perl implementation, not
from Perl level execution.
The C API for the backtrace is as follows:
get_c_backtrace
free_c_backtrace
get_c_backtrace_dump
dump_c_backtrace
Poison
If you see in a debugger a memory area mysteriously full of 0xABABABAB or 0xEFEFEFEF, you
may be seeing the effect of the Poison() macros, see perlclib.
Read-only optrees
Under ithreads the optree is read only. If you want to enforce this, to check for write
accesses from buggy code, compile with "-Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS" to enable
code that allocates op memory via "mmap", and sets it read-only when it is attached to a
subroutine. Any write access to an op results in a "SIGBUS" and abort.
This code is intended for development only, and may not be portable even to all Unix
variants. Also, it is an 80% solution, in that it isn't able to make all ops read only.
Specifically it does not apply to op slabs belonging to "BEGIN" blocks.
However, as an 80% solution it is still effective, as it has caught bugs in the past.
When is a bool not a bool?
There wasn't necessarily a standard "bool" type on compilers prior to C99, and so some
workarounds were created. The "TRUE" and "FALSE" macros are still available as
alternatives for "true" and "false". And the "cBOOL" macro was created to correctly cast
to a true/false value in all circumstances, but should no longer be necessary. Using
"(bool)" expr> should now always work.
There are no plans to remove any of "TRUE", "FALSE", nor "cBOOL".
Finding unsafe truncations
You may wish to run "Configure" with something like
-Accflags='-Wconversion -Wno-sign-conversion -Wno-shorten-64-to-32'
or your compiler's equivalent to make it easier to spot any unsafe truncations that show
up.
The .i Targets
You can expand the macros in a foo.c file by saying
make foo.i
which will expand the macros using cpp. Don't be scared by the results.
AUTHOR
This document was originally written by Nathan Torkington, and is maintained by the
perl5-porters mailing list.