For 100% assurance you need a SCIENTIFIC way to validate and trust a beautifier program. The method described in this section will enable the beautifier program to be accepted as "trust-worthy" and reliable.
In order to verify that beautifier programs like bcpp, indent or cb is not damaging or changing the input source-code after formatting, you can use one of the following technique -
Generate the object code from the original input source code using the compiler -
g++ -c myprogram.cpp
Save this file -
mv myprogram.o myprogram_orig.o
Now run bcpp -
bcpp myprogram.cpp
g++ -c myprogram.cpp
Now use the unix 'diff' command to compare the two object files -
diff myprogram.o myprogram_orig.o
If for some reason you are not able to diff the object files then you MUST use the assembly output as described below.
You can use the assembler output instead of object output from the C++ compiler for doing the comparison. Like -
g++ -S myprogram.cpp
diff myprogram.s myprogram_orig.s
It is strongly recommended that you do these two steps every time you run beautifier programs like bcpp, indent or cb.
Since you cannot compile the Java source code to machine code and you can compile Java source to byte-codes you cannot use the technique given in Method 1 above. When you do diff on Java class files it will always be different.
In this method, a different technique will be given which can be used to validate any beautifier program for Java. Also this method is quite powerful and can be used to validate any beautifier program for any language like C, C++, PERL, SQL, HTML or Java. Since all beautifier program simply rearrange or insert whitespaces , you can strip all the whitespaces from original source file and dump it to a file called verify1.out and strip all the whitespaces from beautified source file and dump it to a file called verify2.out. Now, do a diff on verify1.out and verify2.out. If there is no difference, then beautifier program is working properly. The method is not 100% perfect and can catch atleast 98% of the errors/bugs in the beautifier program. Use this method in conjunction with other methods. But this method is better than not having a verification at all and blindly trusting the beautifier program!!
Note: A whitespace can be one of following - blank space ' ', form-feed '\f', newline '\n', carriage return '\r', horizontal tab '\t' or vertical tab '\v'.
bash$ java StripWhitespaces sample.java > verify1.out bash$ java StripWhitespaces sample_beutified.java > verify2.out bash$ diff verify1.out verify2.out bash$ java StripWhitespaces sample.cpp > verify1.out bash$ java StripWhitespaces sample_beutified.cpp > verify2.out bash$ diff verify1.out verify2.out bash$ java StripWhitespaces sample.sql > verify1.out bash$ java StripWhitespaces sample_beutified.sql > verify2.out bash$ diff verify1.out verify2.out
This is a Korn shell script to verify beautifier program. Requires "pdksh*.rpm" from Linux 'contrib' cdrom. Save this file as 'text' file and chmod a+rx on it. You can re-write this shell script in PERL so that you can use it on Window 95/NT or MSDOS. Uncomment the PRGM variable to point to bcpp, cb or indent
#!/bin/ksh
# Verification program to check C++ Beautifiers 'bcpp', 'indent' or cb
############################################################
# Copyright
# The copyright policy is GNU/GPL.
# Author: Al Dev (Alavoor Vasudevan) alavoor[AT]yahoo.com
############################################################
check_beautify_now()
{
# Remove all the temp files....
\rm -f ${TMP_FILE}
\rm -f ${TMP_CPPFILE}*.*
FNAME=$1
if [ ! -f ${FNAME} ]; then
print "\nError: The file ${FNAME} does not exist!!. Aborting now ...."
exit
fi
\cp -f ${FNAME} ${TMP_CPPFILE}.cpp
${COMPILER} -c ${TMP_CPPFILE}.cpp
if [ ! -f ${TMP_CPPFILE}.o ]; then
print "Fatal Error: Failed to compile ${FNAME}. Aborting now... "
exit
fi
\mv -f ${TMP_CPPFILE}.o ${TMP_CPPFILE}_orig.o
aa=`basename $PRGM`
print "\nRunning, verifying $aa on ${FNAME}"
${PRGM} ${TMP_CPPFILE}.cpp
${COMPILER} -c ${TMP_CPPFILE}.cpp
\rm -f $TMP_FILE
diff ${TMP_CPPFILE}.o ${TMP_CPPFILE}_orig.o 1> $TMP_FILE 2>> $TMP_FILE
result=""
result=`wc -c $TMP_FILE | awk '{print $1}' `
if [ "$result" = "0" ]; then
print "Success!! Beautifier $aa is working properly!!\n"
else
print "Fatal Error: Something wrong!! Beautifier is not working!!"
exit
fi
# ${COMPILER} -S ${TMP_CPPFILE}.cpp
# diff ${TMP_CPPFILE}.s ${TMP_CPPFILE}_orig.s
# Remove all the temp files....
\rm -f ${TMP_FILE}
\rm -f ${TMP_CPPFILE}*.*
}
########## Main of program begins here ##################3
#PRGM=/usr/bin/bcpp
#PRGM=/usr/bin/cb
PRGM=/usr/bin/indent
COMPILER=/usr/bin/g++
TMP_FILE=beautify.tmp
TMP_CPPFILE=beautify-tmp_cppfile
print -n "Enter the C++ file name <default is *.cpp> : "
read ans
if [ "$ans" = "" -o "$ans" = " " ]; then
ans="ALL"
else
FILENAME=$ans
fi
# Remove all the temp files....
\rm -f ${TMP_FILE}
\rm -f ${TMP_CPPFILE}*.*
if [ "$ans" != "ALL" ]; then
check_beautify_now ${FILENAME}
else
ls *.cpp |
while read FILENAME
do
check_beautify_now ${FILENAME}
done
fi