perlhacktips - Tips for Perl core C code hacking
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.
Perl source plays by ANSI C89 rules: no C99 (or C++) extensions. In some cases we have to take pre-ANSI requirements into consideration. You don't care about some particular platform having broken Perl? I hear there is still a strong demand for J2EE programmers.
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 (or a dVAR) 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"};
There is a way to completely hide any modifiable globals (they are all
moved to heap), the compilation setting
-DPERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT_PRIVATE
. It is not normally used, but can be
used for testing, read more about it in Background and PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT in perlguts.
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.
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.
If using gcc, you can add the -std=c89
option which will hopefully
catch most of these unportabilities. (However it might also catch
incompatibilities in your system's header files.)
Use the Configure -Dgccansipedantic
flag to enable the gcc -ansi
-pedantic
flags which enforce stricter ANSI rules.
If using the gcc -Wall
note that not all the possible warnings (like
-Wunitialized
) are given unless you also compile with -O
.
Note that if using gcc, starting from Perl 5.9.5 the Perl core source
code files (the ones at the top level of the source code distribution,
but not e.g. the extensions under ext/) are automatically compiled with
as many as possible of the -std=c89
, -ansi
, -pedantic
, and a
selection of -W
flags (see cflags.SH).
Also study perlport carefully to avoid any bad assumptions about the operating system, filesystems, and so forth.
You may once in a while try a "make microperl" to see whether we can still compile Perl with just the bare minimum of interfaces. (See README.micro.)
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 data 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 really explicitly need 64-bit variables, use I64 and U64, but only if guarded by HAS_QUAD.
Assuming one can dereference any type of pointer for any type of data
- char *p = ...;
- long pony = *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 for usually equivalent to sizeof() of 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. If a character doesn't have a trivial input form, you should add it to the list in regen/unicode_constants.pl, and have Perl create #defines for you, based on the current platform.
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.
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 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.
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 is being changed starting in 5.12 so that these characters will be considered to be Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1).
Mixing #define and #ifdef
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).
Using //-comments
- // This function bamfoodles the zorklator. /* BAD */
That is C99 or C++. Perl is C89. Using the //-comments is silently allowed by many C compilers but cranking up the ANSI C89 strictness (which we like to do) causes the compilation to fail.
Mixing declarations and code
- void zorklator()
- {
- int n = 3;
- set_zorkmids(n); /* BAD */
- int q = 4;
That is C99 or C++. Some C compilers allow that, but you shouldn't.
The gcc option -Wdeclaration-after-statements
scans for such
problems (by default on starting from Perl 5.9.4).
Introducing variables inside for()
- for(int i = ...; ...; ...) { /* BAD */
That is C99 or C++. While it would indeed be awfully nice to have that also in C89, to limit the scope of the loop variable, alas, we cannot.
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);
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 using variadic macros
gcc has had them for a while with its own syntax, and C99 brought them with a standardized syntax. Don't use the former, and use the latter only if the HAS_C99_VARIADIC_MACROS is defined.
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. The Perl code does admittedly use them if available to gain some extra speed (essentially as a funky form of inlining), but you shouldn't.
Binding together several statements in a macro
Use the macros STMT_START and STMT_END.
- STMT_START {
- ...
- } STMT_END
Testing for operating systems or versions when 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.
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.
Last but not least, here are various tips for safer coding.
Do not use gets()
Or we will publicly ridicule you. Seriously.
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.
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.
To really poke around with Perl, you'll probably want to build Perl for debugging, like this:
- ./Configure -d -D optimize=-g
- make
-g
is a flag to the C compiler 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).
Configure 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
- t Trace execution
- o Method and overloading resolution
- c String/numeric conversions
Some of the functionality of the debugging code can be achieved using XS modules.
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 the program with the given arguments.
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.
Steps through the program a line at a time.
Steps through the program a line at a time, without descending into functions.
Run until the next breakpoint.
Run until the end of the current function, then stop again.
Just pressing Enter will do the most recent operation again - it's a blessing when stepping through miles of source code.
Prints the C definition of the argument given.
- (gdb) ptype PL_op
- type = struct op {
- OP *op_next;
- OP *op_sibling;
- 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;
- } *
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.
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).
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 $a = $b + $c
we used before, but give it a bit of
context: $b = "6XXXX"; $c = 2.3;
. Where's a good place to stop and
poke around?
What about pp_add
, the function we examined earlier to implement the
+
operator:
- (gdb) break Perl_pp_add
- Breakpoint 1 at 0x46249f: file pp_hot.c, line 309.
Notice we use Perl_pp_add
and not pp_add
- see
Internal Functions in perlguts. With the breakpoint in place, we can
run our program:
- (gdb) run -e '$b = "6XXXX"; $c = 2.3; $a = $b + $c'
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
- 309 dSP; dATARGET; tryAMAGICbin(add,opASSIGN);
- (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 $b
, 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 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 #
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:
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:
If you want to see what perl is doing when parsing/lexing your code, you can
use BEGIN {}
:
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:
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.
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 variant called splint
(Secure Programming Lint)
available from http://www.splint.org/ that should compile on any
Unix-like platform.
There are lint
and <splint> targets in Makefile, but you may have to
diddle with the flags (see above).
Coverity (http://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.
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 (http://pmd.sourceforge.net/cpd.html) is part of the pmd project (http://pmd.sourceforge.net/). 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 ...
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.
The -ansi
(and its sidekick, -pedantic
) would be nice to be on
always, but unfortunately they are not safe on all platforms, they can
for example cause fatal conflicts with the system headers (Solaris
being a prime example). If Configure -Dgccansipedantic
is used, the
cflags
frontend selects -ansi -pedantic
for the platforms where
they are known to be safe.
Starting from Perl 5.9.4 the following extra flags are added:
-Wendif-labels
-Wextra
-Wdeclaration-after-statement
The following flags would be nice to have but they would first need their own Augean stablemaster:
-Wpointer-arith
-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.
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.
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 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. The said test must be doing something that is quite unfriendly for memory debuggers. If you don't feel like waiting, that you can simply kill away 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
.
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.
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
- http://valgrind.org/
AddressSanitizer is a clang and gcc extension, included in clang since v3.1 and gcc since v4.8. It checks illegal heap pointers, global pointers, stack pointers and use after free errors, and is fast enough that you can easily compile your debugging or optimized perl with it. It does not check memory leaks though. AddressSanitizer is available for Linux, Mac OS X and soon on Windows.
To build perl with AddressSanitizer, your Configure invocation should look like:
- sh Configure -des -Dcc=clang \
- -Accflags=-faddress-sanitizer -Aldflags=-faddress-sanitizer \
- -Alddlflags=-shared\ -faddress-sanitizer
where these arguments mean:
This should be replaced by the full path to your clang executable if it is not in your path.
Compile perl and extensions sources with AddressSanitizer.
Link the perl executable with AddressSanitizer.
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).
See also http://code.google.com/p/address-sanitizer/wiki/AddressSanitizer.
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 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:
Suppress statically defined functions from the profile.
Suppress the verbose descriptions in the profile.
Exclude the given routine and its descendants from the profile.
Display only the given routine and its descendants in the profile.
Generate a summary file called gmon.sum which then may be given to subsequent gprof runs to accumulate data over several runs.
Display routines that have zero usage.
For more detailed explanation of the available commands and output formats, see your own local documentation of gprof.
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:
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
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Gcov-Intro.html#Gcov-Intro
If you want to run any of the tests yourself manually using e.g. valgrind, please note that by default perl does not explicitly cleanup 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 also this environment variable for its own purposes and extended its semantics. Refer to the mod_perl documentation 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
, 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 increases 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.
If compiled with -DPERL_MEM_LOG
, both memory and SV allocations go
through logging functions, which is handy for breakpoint setting.
Unless -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} =~ /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.
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.
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.
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.
On pre-C99 compilers, bool
is defined as equivalent to char
.
Consequently assignment of any larger type to a bool
is unsafe and may
be truncated. The cBOOL
macro exists to cast it correctly.
On those platforms and compilers where bool
really is a boolean (C++,
C99), it is easy to forget the cast. You can force bool
to be a char
by compiling with -Accflags=-DPERL_BOOL_AS_CHAR
. You may also 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.
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.
This document was originally written by Nathan Torkington, and is maintained by the perl5-porters mailing list.