C2PH(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide C2PH(1)
NAME
c2ph, pstruct - Dump C structures as generated from "cc -g -S" stabs
SYNOPSIS
c2ph [-dpnP] [var=val] [files ...]
OPTIONS
Options:
-w wide; short for: type_width=45 member_width=35 offset_width=8
-x hex; short for: offset_fmt=x offset_width=08 size_fmt=x size_width=04
-n do not generate perl code (default when invoked as pstruct)
-p generate perl code (default when invoked as c2ph)
-v generate perl code, with C decls as comments
-i do NOT recompute sizes for intrinsic datatypes
-a dump information on intrinsics also
-t trace execution
-d spew reams of debugging output
-slist give comma-separated list a structures to dump
DESCRIPTION
The following is the old c2ph.doc documentation by Tom Christiansen <[email protected]> Date: 25 Jul 91
08:10:21 GMT
Once upon a time, I wrote a program called pstruct. It was a perl program that tried to parse out C
structures and display their member offsets for you. This was especially useful for people looking at binary
dumps or poking around the kernel.
Pstruct was not a pretty program. Neither was it particularly robust. The problem, you see, was that the C
compiler was much better at parsing C than I could ever hope to be.
So I got smart: I decided to be lazy and let the C compiler parse the C, which would spit out debugger stabs
for me to read. These were much easier to parse. It's still not a pretty program, but at least it's more
robust.
Pstruct takes any .c or .h files, or preferably .s ones, since that's the format it is going to massage them
into anyway, and spits out listings like this:
struct tty {
int tty.t_locker 000 4
int tty.t_mutex_index 004 4
struct tty * tty.t_tp_virt 008 4
struct clist tty.t_rawq 00c 20
int tty.t_rawq.c_cc 00c 4
int tty.t_rawq.c_cmax 010 4
int tty.t_rawq.c_cfx 014 4
int tty.t_rawq.c_clx 018 4
struct tty * tty.t_rawq.c_tp_cpu 01c 4
struct tty * tty.t_rawq.c_tp_iop 020 4
unsigned char * tty.t_rawq.c_buf_cpu 024 4
unsigned char * tty.t_rawq.c_buf_iop 028 4
struct clist tty.t_canq 02c 20
int tty.t_outq.c_clx 058 4
struct tty * tty.t_outq.c_tp_cpu 05c 4
struct tty * tty.t_outq.c_tp_iop 060 4
unsigned char * tty.t_outq.c_buf_cpu 064 4
unsigned char * tty.t_outq.c_buf_iop 068 4
(*int)() tty.t_oproc_cpu 06c 4
(*int)() tty.t_oproc_iop 070 4
(*int)() tty.t_stopproc_cpu 074 4
(*int)() tty.t_stopproc_iop 078 4
struct thread * tty.t_rsel 07c 4
etc.
Actually, this was generated by a particular set of options. You can control the formatting of each column,
whether you prefer wide or fat, hex or decimal, leading zeroes or whatever.
All you need to be able to use this is a C compiler than generates BSD/GCC-style stabs. The -g option on
native BSD compilers and GCC should get this for you.
To learn more, just type a bogus option, like -\?, and a long usage message will be provided. There are a
fair number of possibilities.
If you're only a C programmer, than this is the end of the message for you. You can quit right now, and if
you care to, save off the source and run it when you feel like it. Or not.
But if you're a perl programmer, then for you I have something much more wondrous than just a structure offset
printer.
You see, if you call pstruct by its other incybernation, c2ph, you have a code generator that translates C
code into perl code! Well, structure and union declarations at least, but that's quite a bit.
Prior to this point, anyone programming in perl who wanted to interact with C programs, like the kernel, was
forced to guess the layouts of the C structures, and then hardwire these into his program. Of course, when
you took your wonderfully crafted program to a system where the sgtty structure was laid out differently, your
program broke. Which is a shame.
We've had Larry's h2ph translator, which helped, but that only works on cpp symbols, not real C, which was
also very much needed. What I offer you is a symbolic way of getting at all the C structures. I've couched
them in terms of packages and functions. Consider the following program:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
require 'syscall.ph';
require 'sys/time.ph';
require 'sys/resource.ph';
$ru = "\0" x &rusage'sizeof();
syscall(&SYS_getrusage, &RUSAGE_SELF, $ru) && die "getrusage: $!";
@ru = unpack($t = &rusage'typedef(), $ru);
$utime = $ru[ &rusage'ru_utime + &timeval'tv_sec ]
+ ($ru[ &rusage'ru_utime + &timeval'tv_usec ]) / 1e6;
$usec = $u[ &user'u_utimer
+ (&ITIMER_VIRTUAL * &itimerval'struct)
+ &itimerval'it_value
+ &timeval'tv_usec
];
sizeof Returns the bytes in the structure, or the member if
you pass it an argument, such as
&rusage'sizeof(&rusage'ru_utime)
typedef This is the perl format definition for passing to pack and
unpack. If you ask for the typedef of a nothing, you get
the whole structure, otherwise you get that of the member
you ask for. Padding is taken care of, as is the magic to
guarantee that a union is unpacked into all its aliases.
Bitfields are not quite yet supported however.
offsetof This function is the byte offset into the array of that
member. You may wish to use this for indexing directly
into the packed structure with vec() if you're too lazy
to unpack it.
typeof Not to be confused with the typedef accessor function, this
one returns the C type of that field. This would allow
you to print out a nice structured pretty print of some
structure without knoning anything about it beforehand.
No args to this one is a noop. Someday I'll post such
a thing to dump out your u structure for you.
The way I see this being used is like basically this:
% h2ph <some_include_file.h > /usr/lib/perl/tmp.ph
% c2ph some_include_file.h >> /usr/lib/perl/tmp.ph
% install
It's a little tricker with c2ph because you have to get the includes right. I can't know this for your
system, but it's not usually too terribly difficult.
The code isn't pretty as I mentioned -- I never thought it would be a 1000- line program when I started, or I
might not have begun. :-) But I would have been less cavalier in how the parts of the program communicated
with each other, etc. It might also have helped if I didn't have to divine the makeup of the stabs on the
fly, and then account for micro differences between my compiler and gcc.
Anyway, here it is. Should run on perl v4 or greater. Maybe less.
--tom
perl v5.16.3 2016-11-06 C2PH(1)
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