Qt Application – Memory Errors

A simply program was created that containing a single main() function with a QApplication instance, a single shot timer to force the program to quit and a call to the Qt event processing executive.  This simply program also had the same memory issues, so this is some sort of issue with Qt, and probably explains why the External Errors are disabled by default in the Analyzer.

The valgrind utility has an option to disable (suppress) errors from being reported.  The ‑‑gen‑suppressions=all option can be used to generate a list of errors to suppress.  These error suppressions (extracted from the output - between the sets of braces) were put into the ibcp.supp file in the test sub-directory.  The memory test script was modified with the ‑‑suppression=$dir/ibcp.supp option where $dir is set to the test sub-directory in the source directory within the script.

This error suppression file can also be added to the Analyzer in QtCreator by going to Options... in the Tools menu and going to the Analyzer options page.  In the Memory Analysis Options section, the Add... button is used to select the ibcp.supp file.  (Note: this is only for running on Linux.)

The commented static linking commands in the CMake file were removed.  Since the executable is now going to require two Qt library files, there is no longer any reason to link the MinGW libraries required by the executable statically.  All the required dynamic link libraries will be included in future releases of the binary zip file for Windows.  If I read the licensing correctly, this is permitted if the libraries were not built from custom source.

[commit  af6faac469]

Qt Application – Building

Now that the program is using the QApplication class, the QtGui component needed to be added to the find package for Qt4 command in addition to the QtCore component in the CMake file. 

Upon testing these changes, there were no differences, however, the memory test reported a number of lost memory blocks.  It was not obvious where the problem was and was just reported on the line with the QApplication app instance.  After much experimentation, the problem was caused by statically linking libgcc and libstdc++.  Without the static linking, there were no more errors - at least when using Analyzer in QtCreator.

When running the memory test script, many more memory errors were reported, again against the QApplication app instance.  These were actually being reported in Analyzer, but were not listed because they were disabled (External Errors on the funnel looking icon on the Analyzer tool bar).

A commit was made with the changes for the QApplication instance and how the command line arguments are handled.  The static linking part of the CMake build file was temporarily commented (this will be dealt with next).

[commit  01a79dda20]

Qt Application – Event Loop

The Qt event loop is started with a call to the exec() member function of QApplication.  Normally when the users requests the program to exit from the GUI, the exec() function returns.  This occurs when the quit() function is called from one of the GUI elements (for example, the close on the application windows of Exit from the File menu).

Since no GUI elements have been implemented yet including any window, somehow the quit() function needs to be called.  This is accomplished with a single shot timer initiated with the call:

QTimer::singleShot(0, &app, SLOT(quit()));

This timer times out immediately and calls the quit() slot of the QApplication instance, but fortunately this does not occur until the exec() function is called.  Once exec() is called, it immediately returns, exiting the application.

Qt Application – Command Line Arguments

Up to now, the source code has been modified to use Qt support classes, but the program is not yet a Qt application.  A Qt application has a GUI (usually though it is possible to have a command line Qt application).  A GUI application has an event processing loop, which basically means that instead of processing sequentially from start to end, it processes events when they occur such as a keyboard press or a mouse click and calling the appropriate function to carry out the selected action.

A Qt application starts by creating an instance of a QApplication (or a QCoreApplication for a command line application).  Since this project will have a GUI, a QApplication instance will be created, but no GUI will be started if either the version or a test mode options are selected on the command line.

The command line arguments, via the argc and argv arguments of main(), are passed to the QApplication constructor because there are some Qt options that can be specified on the command line.  The arguments() member function of QApplication is used to obtain a QStringList of the remaining options (with the Qt options removed).  The first string in this list is still the name of the program.  The argc and argv arguments to the various functions were changed to QStringList &args, which is set to the arguments.

Internationalization (Qt)

Applications developed with Qt can support internationalization meaning support for multiple languages.  While I have no intention in implementing any language other than English, the door can be left open to add additional language translations later.

This is accomplished by adding the QObject::tr() function around all constant strings that would need to be translated.  The Qt linguist utilities use this as one way to identify strings that need a translation.  The Qt widget classes inherit this function from QObject and therefore just tr() is used without the scope.  This function can also be added to classes that don't inherit from QObject by adding a macro to the beginning of the class definition:

class MyClass
{
    Q_DECLARE_TR_FUNCTIONS(MyClass)
    ...
};

So, this was added to the Token class (so tr() could be used on the token status messages) and the Parser class (so tr() could be used on the parser error messages).

The scoped form QObject::tr() was added for the version, usage, error and test strings.  However, the GPL and test output strings were not changed so that the output of the regression tests would not change (otherwise the results will not match the expected result files).  The table initialization error messages were also not changed since these are development errors and will never occur in an official release.  There are alternatives to using scoped QObject::tr() form, but these need to wait until the program is turned into a full fledge Qt application (next up).

One other minor change was made to all class, struct and enum definitions where the opening brace was moved to a separate line instead of the end of the line, which is the same format used for if, for, while, etc. statements.  The opening brace on array initializers remain at the end of the line (for now).  And two unnamed enumerations were given names.

[commit  58b55f0b51]

Constant Access Getter Functions

Class member functions that do not modify the class instance should be defined to indicate this, which is coded as a trailing const on the function inside the class definition:

class MyClass {
    int value;
    ...
public:
    int value(void) const
    {
        return m_value;
    }
    int valueSquared(void) const;
}

If the function body is defined in class source file instead in the class definition in the header file, the trailing const is also necessary:

int MyClass::valueSquared(void) const
{
    return m_value * m_value;
}

The functions in the Table, Token and Translator classes that don't modify the instances were made constant functions.  The Parser class doesn't have any non-modifying access functions.  The getToken() function was also renamed to the more consistent token().  This is a good place to create another development tag: v0.2-4.

[commit  af69957e69]

Parser Errors – Resolved

It turned that many more places needed to be tested for parser errors.  The number of tests ballooned from 112 to 301 (43 places times seven parser errors).  A commit was made with all these tests.  While working on correcting the errors, there were only really two types of parser errors, an unrecognizable character and a numerical error.  So the tests were reduced to 86 with the six possible numerical errors spread across the 43 places.

The numerical parser errors were rephrased to the "expected such-and-such" format except for the "floating point constant is out of range" error ("expected valid floating point constant" didn't seem quite appropriate).  To determine which type of parser error occurs, the data type of the token is set to Double for numeric errors (previously the data type was set to None for all errors).

Numerical parser errors should only be used only when a numeric expression is expected.  In other words, when a number constant is expected, but there is something wrong with the number, then the appropriate numeric parser error should be reported.  In this case, the error should point where in the error is detected on the constant.  However, when a non-numeric expression is expected, the error should point to the beginning of the constant.  Consider the following two numerical parser errors (missing sign or digits in the exponent):

A = B + 1.2e
A$ = B$ + 1.2.e

In the first statement, the error should point to the character following the "e" indicating that a sign or digit(s) were expected in the exponent.  However, in the second statement, the same error does not make sense (pointing to the character after the "e").  The correct error should point to the "1" saying that a string expression was expected.

The remaining parser error (unrecognizable character) was treated as a normal bad token with the proper translator error being reported so the "unrecognizable character" error should never occur.  All the parser error reporting has been corrected.  More work is expected once more commands are implemented.

[commit 885389f640] [commit 6de8df90b] [commit  82ebc0beab]

Parser Errors – New Test

There are seven parser errors that can occur, but only two major types - an unrecognizable character error and some type of error in a numerical constant.  To test each of these seven errors, a new translator test (#14) was created for all the possible places during translation each of these errors can occur.  If no instances were missed, this is 16 places for each of the seven errors for a total of 112 test inputs.

The translator was temporarily modified to output the string "PARSER:" in front of the parser errors so they can easily be seen.  This does affect any of the current expected test results since none of the current translator tests have parser errors (an obvious oversight).

For now, the expected results for this new test contains the current output, but will be updated as these are corrected to the desired "expected such-and-such" error messages.  The numeric errors are appropriate if the translator was expecting a numerical constant (in other words, an operand), so the existing parser errors will be changed to the "expected such-and-such" format with the possible exception of the "constant is out of range" error.

Note that because of the recent changes to the regression test scripts (which now automatically detect tests), no modifications were needed to add this new test.

[commit  aa9271b8c9]

Translator Class Usage

Just like the Parser class, a single instance of the Translator class is created and a reference to it is passed around the program.  Unlike the Parser class, the Translator class has many more member variables, many of which are complex types (mainly stacks).  So that all these members do not need to be initialized for each new instance, the single instance design will remain for now.

There is a loop that performs the translation of an input line - the test translate input routine - which also prints the results of the translation.  This translation loop should really be handled within the Translator class, which should either return the translated output or an error.  The test routine should call this and then handle printing the results.

Therefore, a new setInput() function was implemented in the Translator class (the function name chosen to mirror the Parser class).  The functionality of the start() and getOperateState() functions was moved to this new function, which also instances its own parser.  A boolean success/fail flag is returned.

For the caller, upon success, it can proceed to obtain the output using the Translator output() function, renamed from getResults().  If an error is found, the Translator will clean up its internal variables and save the token at which the error was found with an error message.  The caller can access these through the new errorToken() and errorMessage() access functions.

The Translator will handle releasing the memory used by the error token.  There is a new internal function to set the error token.  If the error token pointer is already set, the old error token is freed.  The error token is also freed in the Translator's destructor if the pointer is set.  There is one problem with this scheme - Parser errors are returned directly, and these are not in the form "expected such-and-such" so errors could be confusing to the user.  This will be tackled next.

One other minor change was made, there was a setDefaultDataType() function in the Translator for setting the default data type of a token.  This was the remaining in-line access function still in the Translator header file and worked by examining the various members of the token.  No Translator variables were used, so it is more appropriate for this to be a Token class function, so was moved to the Token class as a new setDataType() function (taking no arguments, overloading the current function that takes a data type argument).

[commit 0dc86d1a4] [commit a88ed2f2bb]

Parser Class Usage

Currently, an instance of the Parser class is created for the program and a reference to it is passed around between the various routines.  The Parser class only has a few member variables and except for the reference to the table instance, these members are initialized for each new line that is parsed.  Therefore, it is not necessary to have a single parser instance for the program - a parser instance can be created as needed and destroyed when no longer needed.

The Parser class can be though of as a function call, though a complex one.  The parser is given an input line and returns one token at a time until either the end of the line is reached or an error is found.  A new function could be implemented to return a list of tokens for the line being parsed.  There are two locations where the parser is currently being used: the test parse input and test translate input routines.

Both of these callers work slightly different.  The test parse input routine just gets tokens until the line end or an error is found.  However, the test translate routine sets the Parser operands state from its own operand state (whether looking for an operand or not) before getting each token.  This is done so that the Parser can determine when it should be looking for a negative sign on a constant (operand state) or a minus operator (not operand state).

This implies a intimate use of the parser while a line is being translated.  So a function was not implemented to return a list of tokens.  The code was modified to instance a Parser when needed - in the two test routines - instead of passing a single instance reference of the Parser around.  These leads to the usage of the Translator class...

New Change Comment Philosophy

Going through the code and for the most part removing all the change comments (with a date), I've had a change in philosophy one how code should be commented.  Perhaps for a released program, it makes sense to add a comment with a date when a bug is fixed, but during development and debugging it's expected that there will be a lot of changes.  Making a dated change comment for every single change is just a bit excessive - and this certainly could be seen here.

The comments at the beginning of the files probably should be removed also or at least cleaned up, but these were left alone for the time being.  Perhaps some of the major highlights will be left in.  In any case, going forward, the git commit comments will be relied on to comment the changes made to the source file.  Functionality comments will still be added as needed, but without all the change comments, the code should be easier to read.

The latest commit contains more of this comment clean up.  All of the project is now using Qt functions; all the standard C library functions (and associated include statements) have been removed.  Most if not all the variables and functions have been renamed to the new naming scheme.  This is probably a good place to add another tag, and so the current code was tagged as v0.2-3.

[commit ebe943379d]

Qt Transition – Translator Class

The variables and functions of the Translator class were renamed to the Qt style naming.  Nothing much to report here except that the RpnItem structure used by the translator was changed to a class with private members with access functions added.  Through the translator source file along with the new token and command handler source files, all of the dated change comments were mostly removed (some were appropriate comments so only the date was removed).  These were just cluttering up the code (for now the header comments were left alone).

[commit  85daa1fc7e]

Single Class Instance (Singleton Class)

There is only going to be one instance of the Table class in the program.  I recalled from when learning C++ that there was a way to allow only one instance of a class to be created.  After a little research, it was found that this is known as a singleton class.  There are several ways to implement this.  The solution used for the Table class is described below.  The goals were (click Continue... for complete details on the implementation):

1. Allow only one instance of the table to be created
2. Detect table entry errors when the instance is created
3. Return a list of any error messages of errors found in the table entries
4. Get a reference to the table instance created

Qt Transition – Table Class

The Table class contains two internal structures, one for a table entry and one for expression information within the table entry.  Only the Table class should have access to these, so their definitions were moved from the table header file to the table source file along with two constants.  Only a forward reference to the table entry was left behind.  Other code has no need to access these.

As a side effect, the code for all the table access functions also had to be moved to the table source file since the structure definitions were no long available in the header file.  This would appear to cause an inefficiency since these functions are no longer in-line functions since they are not defined directly in the class definition.  However, the GCC compiler (and probably other C++ compilers) as part of their optimization, will still in-line these small functions.

All of the table variables and functions were renamed to Qt style naming.  The remaining C character definitions were changed to QString and the remaining standard library calls (and their include statements) were replaced with Qt equivalents.  All the various initialized arrays used for the table entries were made static since they are only used in the table source file.

[commit e8ddccc029]

Qt Transition – Token Class

The Token class, which previously was defined as a structure (though the only difference being that members are public by default instead of private), was changed to be a full class complete with access functions for all the member variables.  Some additional convenience access functions were created (like checking if the code in the token is equal to a particular code).

[commit fc32a47915]

Code (Class) Reorganization

One convention used in C++ programs are to place each major class into their own header and source file.  While the source code for major classes for this project are already in separate files (table, parser and translator), all the class definitions were in a single header file and this header file was getting unwieldy.

So in preparation for all the new classes that will be added for the GUI, the major classes were separated into their own header files including the Token class with its own source file.  The translator source file was also getting large, so the token handler and command handler functions were moved into their own source files with associated header files.

As part of this reorganization, many of the dated change comments were removed as these were just cluttering up the code.  None of the change comments in the header file were changed, but probably should as they are taking up quite a few lines.  The awk scripts also were modified since the sources of some of the enumerations were relocated and the CMake file was updated accordingly for the new files.

Several static access functions were added to the Translator class so that the token and command handler functions have access to the static values in the translator source file, which were previously accessible since these functions were in the same source file.  These handlers are also accessing many other Translator internal data members (the reason they are defined as friend functions).  This also should be changed, which will be done when the Translator class is transitioned.

[commit 1254b8048b]