2 Commits
main ... 26

Author SHA1 Message Date
e763183cc4 Recount at 2.2% once the eight bool predicates convert
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The port landed on andrew/akbasic as libakstdlib-26, and converting the eight
sites the first count wrote off moves the figure from 301/13 to 313/7 --
2.2% bypassed on the same tree, against 86.4% before the port.

Those eight were the whole of #38, which asked this library for a form a bool
predicate could call. That was ruled invalid: a function which cannot report
an error changes its own signature instead. Seven did, and the eighth is a
bsearch(3) comparator whose signature libc fixes, so it has nowhere to put an
out parameter. Record that the wrapper shape was right and the consumer's
signatures were wrong, because the first count assumed the opposite.

What is genuinely left is six snprintf sites that want truncation as an
answer -- #34 -- and the comparator, which nothing tracks. #38 attributed it
to akbasic #14; that is a mis-citation and #14 is an unrelated issue.

Correct the call profile for the new total, and note two findings the port
produced rather than measured: a file descriptor leak in akbasic's DLOAD,
caught by the ATTEMPT/CLEANUP rule the conversion forced somebody to obey,
and a latent collision in its host-type registration.

Refs #26, #38

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-03 15:45:02 -04:00
cff2a64575 Recount the consumer calls against this release
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akbasic's src/ ported onto 0.2.0 calls this library 301 times and raw libc
13 -- 4.1% bypassed, against 86.4% on the same tree before the port and
92.2% at the first count. The port builds clean at -Wall -Wextra, passes
112/112 of akbasic's ctest suite and is ASan+UBSan-clean.

The method was never written down and the figure was not reproducible.
scripts/consumer_calls.py is that method, and reproducing it turned up two
corrections: the old 116 was 117 by its own table's arithmetic, and 119 by
a complete count -- the table had no row for strncmp or memmove.

Nothing was blocked by a missing wrapper. 272 of 285 sites converted; the
13 that did not are blocked by wrapper shape, and are filed as #32-#38.

Say plainly what the number does not cover: akbasic makes 0 calls into
list, tree, hash map and string buffer combined, so the recount is
evidence about the string, memory and format surface and about nothing
else.

Refs #26

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-03 12:53:19 -04:00
3 changed files with 436 additions and 14 deletions

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@@ -181,8 +181,9 @@ would notice.
## Testing
There are four harnesses. The first three take seconds; the fourth takes about
half an hour.
There are five harnesses. The first three take seconds and the fifth is instant;
the fourth takes about half an hour. The fifth is the only one that measures
something outside this repository.
### 1. The test suite
@@ -469,6 +470,41 @@ right-leaning tree would have blown the stack the depth cap exists to protect),
and `aksl_tree_remove` on an empty tree, which without its guard dereferences
NULL. Both are in the suite now — which is what the harness is for.
### 5. Consumer adoption
Coverage says the tests reach the code and mutation testing says they would
notice it breaking. Neither says anybody *wanted* the code. That question only has
an external answer, so there is a harness for it too:
```sh
scripts/consumer_calls.py ../akbasic/src # the ratio
scripts/consumer_calls.py ../akbasic/src --detail --per-file # where it comes from
scripts/consumer_calls.py ../akbasic/src --baseline 313/7 # against a past count
```
It counts, across a consumer's source directory, how often that consumer calls
this library against how often it reaches past it to the libc function this
library wraps. Calls to libc functions **not** wrapped here — `isdigit`, `exit`,
`qsort` — score on neither side; the question is how often an *available* wrapper
gets bypassed. Comments and string literals are stripped before counting, and the
wrapped-libc set is read out of `include/akstdlib.h` rather than hardcoded, so a
recount after a release measures the surface that release actually shipped.
A wrapper nobody calls either does not fit or is not discoverable, and both are
this library's problem rather than the consumer's. `TODO.md` carries the standing
figures and what they did and did not justify.
Two warnings, both learned the hard way and both printed by `--baseline`:
- **A rate is only comparable between two counts of the same tree.** If the
consumer grew between them, compare the percentage and say which commit each
number came from. Comparing the totals across a tree that tripled in size is how
a real improvement gets reported as a regression, or the reverse.
- **One consumer's ratio is evidence, not a plan.** A consumer that draws
everything from fixed pools will never call the allocator however good the
allocator is. Weight the result by what the consumer is, and get a second
consumer before treating any ranking as settled.
## The pre-push hook
`.githooks/pre-push` runs the fast harnesses — the default build and the

165
TODO.md
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@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ it has been through grooming.
| Function coverage | 100% (154/154) |
| Doxygen | 100% of 154, gated — `cmake --build build --target docs` fails on an undocumented function, parameter or return |
| Mutation score | 72.3% (188/260 sampled from 1701), gated at 65 |
| Consumer adoption | akbasic ported onto 0.2.0 calls this library 313 times and raw libc 7 — **2.2% bypassed**, from 92.2% at first count. Ungated, and one consumer only |
The six confirmed defects that used to head this file are fixed and
`AKSL_KNOWN_FAILING_TESTS` is empty. What they were, and what changed as a result,
@@ -102,15 +103,16 @@ are fixed: the right child's `depth + 1` in the depth-first walk, and
## Evidence from the first full consumer
`akbasic` (`source.starfort.tech/andrew/akbasic`) is a ~6,300-line C interpreter
built on this library and `libakerror`. It was the first consumer to exercise the
whole surface rather than a corner of it, **and what it could not use is what
prioritised everything that has been built since.**
`akbasic` (`source.starfort.tech/andrew/akbasic`) is a C interpreter built on this
library and `libakerror` — ~6,300 lines of `src/` when it was first measured,
20,169 now. It was the first consumer to exercise the whole surface rather than a
corner of it, **and what it could not use is what prioritised everything that has
been built since.**
**The number that started it.** Across `src/`, akbasic made **10 calls into this
library and 116 to raw libc** — a library whose value proposition is "turn silent
libc failures into error contexts", bypassed 92% of the time by the consumer most
committed to it.
library and 119 to raw libc** — a library whose value proposition is "turn silent
libc failures into error contexts", bypassed **92%** of the time by the consumer
most committed to it.
| Raw libc it had to use | Count | Now available as |
|---|---|---|
@@ -121,8 +123,17 @@ committed to it.
| `strncpy` | 15 | `aksl_strncpy` |
| `strtoll` / `strtod` | 2 | `aksl_strtoll` / `aksl_strtod` |
| `fgets` | 2 | `aksl_fgets` |
| `strncmp` | 1 | `aksl_strncmp` |
| `memmove` | 1 | `aksl_memmove` |
| `strstr` | 1 | `aksl_strstr` |
Two corrections to that figure, both found by rebuilding it. It used to read 116;
the table it sat above summed to 117 and had no row for `strncmp` or `memmove`.
119 is what `scripts/consumer_calls.py` returns against akbasic `4e188b2`, and it
is the number everything below compares to. **The method is now a script rather
than a paragraph, because recovering it afterwards cost more than writing it down
would have.**
**All four things the port had to write for itself now exist here.**
1. **A strict `strtoll`/`strtod` wrapper** (`akbasic/src/convert.c`, ~60 lines). The
@@ -144,8 +155,138 @@ committed to it.
the sign-extended djb2 reads bytes unsigned; and the missing `va_end` — which
akbasic's stdio text sink ran on every line of program output — is fixed.
**Still true, and still shaping the wishlist.** akbasic uses no allocator, no lists
and no trees, drawing everything from fixed pools by design. **A consumer that does
allocate would weight the `open`/`read`/`write` work far higher than this one
does**, so one consumer's count is evidence, not a plan. Re-counting against this
release is #26.
### The recount, against this release
akbasic's `src/` was ported onto 0.2.0 and counted again (#26). The port builds
clean at `-Wall -Wextra`, passes **112/112** of akbasic's ctest suite, and is
ASan+UBSan-clean.
| | libakstdlib | raw libc | bypassed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline — akbasic `4e188b2`, 5,679 lines of `src/` | 10 | 119 | **92.2%** |
| Before the port — akbasic `330d731`, 20,169 lines | 45 | 285 | **86.4%** |
| **After the port — same tree** | **313** | **7** | **2.2%** |
**Read the third row against the second, not the first.** The tree tripled between
the baseline and the port, so 10/119 and 45/285 are counts of two different
programs; only 86.4% → 2.2% is a like-for-like measurement. The 45 in the middle
row is worth its own note — akbasic had already adopted `aksl_f*` across
`runtime_disk.c` on its own, without anybody counting.
**Nothing was blocked by a missing wrapper.** Every libc call akbasic makes had an
`aksl_*` counterpart. 278 of the 285 sites converted; the 7 that did not are
blocked by wrapper *shape*, and they are the useful output:
| Why it could not be used | Sites | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Truncation is the answer, not the error | 6 | `runtime.c` `akbasic_runtime_error`, `host.c` (×3), `runtime_struct.c` (×2) |
| A `bsearch(3)` comparator, whose signature libc fixes, so there is no out parameter to report through | 1 | `verbs.c` `verb_compare` |
**The eight sites that used to head this table are gone, and how they went is the
finding.** They were the `bool` predicates and `void` helpers with no error channel
to route into, and the first filing (#38) asked this library for a form they could
call. Andrew ruled that invalid: a function that cannot report an error changes its
own signature rather than being handed a way to swallow one. Seven of the eight did
exactly that — they now return `akerr_ErrorContext *` and hand the answer back
through an out parameter, one of them (`akbasic_environment_is_waiting_for` and its
sibling) as a public header change. Four more functions on the same call chains
(`scanner.c` `peek` and `match_next_char`, `sink_akgl.c` `putchar_at`, `echo_line`
and `edit_key`) had to move with them. **The wrapper shape was right and the
consumer's signatures were wrong**, which is not what the first count assumed.
The truncation six are a contract decision rather than an accident, and they are
what is genuinely left. The sharpest is `akbasic_runtime_error` — the one function
that tells the user *what went wrong*, formatting a 12,384-byte error message into
a 512-byte line. Truncating a report there is correct; raising `AKERR_OUTOFBOUNDS`
would replace the diagnosis with a second, different failure. Two more are
truncation-tolerant renderers that print what fits and stop, one of which reads
`snprintf`'s return value to *detect* the truncation and skip the rest of the
render. The remaining three read host-supplied strings into fixed fields.
Two of those three, in `akbasic/src/host.c`, are a latent defect the port surfaced
rather than a decision: a host-registered type name over 31 characters truncates
silently, and two names sharing a 31-character prefix then collide in
`akbasic_structtype_find` — where `structtype.c` refuses the identical case
outright with a limit message. The two registration paths disagree. That is
akbasic's to fix, and it is flagged at the site.
### What the recount found, and where it went
Every blocked site came back to wrapper *shape* rather than a missing wrapper, and
the same seven shapes recurred across ten independent conversion passes. They are
filed, not listed here:
| Finding | Filed as |
|---|---|
| `aksl_snprintf`'s `count` out-param is required, so ~20 sites carry an `int written` that is written and never read. Raised by all ten passes. `-Wall -Wextra` cannot see it — `&written` is a use | #32 |
| No equality comparison. All 43 comparison sites flatten the three-way `int` to `== 0`; not one wants an ordering, and five now need a sentinel whose *initial value is load-bearing* | #33 |
| No truncating format and no length query, which is the whole of the truncation-six above and the only shape still blocking a conversion | #34 |
| `aksl_hashmap_*` carries one payload, which is the only reason `akbasic/src/symtab.c` still exists | #35 |
| `aksl_fgets` signals end of input by raising, so a read loop cannot be a condition | #36 |
| A caller cannot add its own context to a wrapper's error, so it raises and discards instead — eight lines where there were two | #37 |
| No form a `bool` predicate or a `void` function can call, which was 8 of the 13 sites the first count could not convert. **Ruled invalid** — the consumer changes its own signature, and now has | #38 |
**#38 is the one worth reading, because it is the one that was wrong.** It asked
this library to grow a form a `bool` predicate could call, and the answer was that
a predicate which cannot report an error should stop returning `bool`. Seven of its
eight sites converted on that basis, and they are why the count is 2.2% and not 4.1%.
The `ctype.h` half of the same filing is settled too: `isspace`, `isdigit`,
`isalnum` and `toupper` cannot fail, so there is nothing for a wrapper to return
and no reason to add one. What a caller does need is the `(unsigned char)` cast
every correct `ctype.h` call takes, and that is akbasic's note to keep, not this
library's.
The `bsearch` comparator has **no issue of its own**. #38 attributed it to akbasic
`#14`, which is a mis-citation — that issue is the `COLLISION`/`BUMP` pairing
threshold. Converting the comparator means dropping `bsearch(3)` for an in-house
binary search that can propagate, on a lookup that runs once per scanned
identifier, and that wants filing against akbasic before anybody does it.
**The one thing the wrappers did better than the libc they replaced** is worth
recording next to the complaints: `aksl_fgets`'s `len_out` **deleted** two `strlen`
calls rather than converting them, and is more correct than what it replaced for a
line containing an embedded NUL. It is the only one of 278 conversions that
produced less code than it started with.
**The port also found a defect in akbasic rather than in this library.** `DLOAD`
leaked a file descriptor: its read loop sat inside an `ATTEMPT` block and the
`PASS` in it returned past `CLEANUP`, so a scan error left the file open. Hoisting
the loop into its own helper — which converting `fgets` required anyway, because
neither `CATCH` nor `PASS` is legal in a loop inside an `ATTEMPT` — fixes it. That
is the protocol's own rule catching a real leak the moment somebody had to obey it.
### Still true, and still the reason one count is not a plan
akbasic uses no allocator, no lists and no trees, drawing everything from fixed
pools by design, and porting it did not change that. Of the 313 calls it now
makes:
| Area | Calls | |
|---|---|---|
| Strings | 149 | 47.6% |
| Memory | 72 | 23.0% |
| Formatted output | 43 | 13.7% |
| Streams and files | 36 | 11.5% |
| String → number | 12 | 3.8% |
| Hashing | 1 | 0.3% |
| **Collections** | **0** | **0%** |
**Five sixths of the evidence is strings, memory and formatting.** The collections
work — list, tree, hash map, string buffer, `src/collections.c` and the largest
single body of code in this library — has **not one consumer call site**, and the
single hashing call next to it is `aksl_strhash_djb2` feeding a hash table akbasic
wrote for itself. **A consumer that does allocate would weight the
`open`/`read`/`write` work far higher than this one does**, so this remains
evidence and not a plan.
**The number to distrust is not the 2.2%; it is the 0%.** A recount that moves
92% to 2% on one consumer says the string, memory and format wrappers fit the
consumer that asked for them. It says nothing at all about the half of the library
that consumer never calls, and it cannot, however many times it is run. What would
say something is a second consumer with different shape — one that allocates.
`akbasic/src/symtab.c` is the sharpest instance. It is the hand-rolled fixed-capacity
string-keyed hash table `aksl_hashmap_*` was generalised from, it survived the port
untouched, and the reason turned out to be one field rather than a design
disagreement — everything else about the two already lines up. #35 has it, and it
is the first collections work with a consumer actually waiting for it.

245
scripts/consumer_calls.py Executable file
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@@ -0,0 +1,245 @@
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
Consumer adoption harness for libakstdlib.
Answers one question about a consumer's source tree: how often does it call
this library, and how often does it reach past this library to the libc
function this library wraps?
The ratio is the only external evidence there is about whether the surface that
got built is the surface anyone wanted. A wrapper nobody calls is a wrapper that
either does not fit or is not discoverable, and both are the library's problem.
The number this reports is only worth something if it is reproducible, which is
why this is a script and not a paragraph. TODO.md's first consumer figure was
recorded without one, and recovering the method afterwards cost more than
writing it down would have.
WHAT COUNTS
* The corpus is every *.c and *.h directly under the given directory. It does
not recurse: a consumer's src/ is the thing being measured, not its vendored
dependencies, and those are usually a subdirectory.
* Comments and string/character literals are stripped before anything is
counted, so a function named in prose or inside a format string does not
score. This matters more than it sounds -- "strlen" appears in doc comments
throughout a codebase that has been thinking about strlen.
* A call site is IDENT immediately followed by '(', where IDENT is not
preceded by an identifier character. Declarations are not distinguished from
calls; a consumer that declares a function named for a libc entry point will
over-count by one per declaration, which is visible in --detail.
* A library call is any IDENT matching ^aksl_.
* A bypass is any IDENT naming a libc function this library wraps. That set is
read out of include/akstdlib.h rather than hardcoded, so it grows when the
library grows and a recount after a release measures the surface that
release actually shipped.
* libc functions this library does NOT wrap -- isdigit, exit, qsort -- score
on neither side. The question is how often a consumer bypasses an available
wrapper, not how much libc it uses. Adding a wrapper for something and
having it ignored is a finding; a consumer calling exit() is not.
WHAT IT CANNOT TELL YOU
One consumer's ratio is evidence, not a plan. A consumer that draws
everything from fixed pools will never call the allocator no matter how good
the allocator is, and will weight the string wrappers accordingly. Weight the
result by what the consumer is, and get a second consumer before treating any
ranking as settled.
Usage:
scripts/consumer_calls.py DIR [options]
DIR consumer source directory to measure, e.g.
../akbasic/src
--header PATH akstdlib.h to read the wrapped-libc set from
(default: include/akstdlib.h beside this script's repo)
--detail list the per-function breakdown on both sides
--per-file list per-file counts, worst bypass ratio first
--baseline A/B compare against a previous count, e.g. --baseline 10/119
--json emit the whole result as JSON instead of text
"""
import argparse
import json
import os
import re
import sys
from collections import Counter
# Wrapper families that are this library's own constructs rather than a libc
# function under a new name. aksl_list_append has no libc counterpart, so
# "append" must not become a name a consumer can be scored for bypassing.
LIBRARY_ONLY_PREFIXES = ("hashmap", "list", "tree", "strbuf", "version",
"strhash")
# Library-only names whose first underscore-separated word is shared with a real
# libc entry point, so a prefix rule cannot separate them. aksl_realpath wraps
# realpath(3) and must score; aksl_realpath_alloc is this library's own.
LIBRARY_ONLY_NAMES = frozenset(("freep", "realpath_alloc"))
CALL = re.compile(r"(?<![A-Za-z0-9_])([A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_]*)\s*\(")
def wrapped_libc(header):
"""The set of libc names this library wraps, read out of the header."""
with open(header, encoding="utf-8", errors="replace") as handle:
text = handle.read()
names = set()
for match in re.finditer(r"\baksl_([a-z0-9_]+)\s*\(", text):
name = match.group(1)
if name.split("_")[0] in LIBRARY_ONLY_PREFIXES:
continue
if name in LIBRARY_ONLY_NAMES:
continue
names.add(name)
return names
def strip_c(src):
"""Remove comments and string/char literals, preserving everything else."""
out = []
i, end = 0, len(src)
while i < end:
char = src[i]
if char == "/" and i + 1 < end and src[i + 1] == "/":
while i < end and src[i] != "\n":
i += 1
elif char == "/" and i + 1 < end and src[i + 1] == "*":
i += 2
while i + 1 < end and not (src[i] == "*" and src[i + 1] == "/"):
i += 1
i += 2
elif char in ('"', "'"):
quote = char
i += 1
while i < end and src[i] != quote:
if src[i] == "\\":
i += 1
i += 1
i += 1
out.append(" ")
else:
out.append(char)
i += 1
return "".join(out)
def measure(srcdir, libc):
"""Count library and bypass call sites across one directory."""
library, bypass, per_file = Counter(), Counter(), {}
names = sorted(name for name in os.listdir(srcdir)
if name.endswith((".c", ".h")))
for name in names:
with open(os.path.join(srcdir, name), encoding="utf-8",
errors="replace") as handle:
text = strip_c(handle.read())
here_lib = here_raw = 0
for match in CALL.finditer(text):
ident = match.group(1)
if ident.startswith("aksl_"):
library[ident] += 1
here_lib += 1
elif ident in libc:
bypass[ident] += 1
here_raw += 1
if here_lib or here_raw:
per_file[name] = (here_lib, here_raw)
return library, bypass, per_file
def rate(bypassed, total):
return 100.0 * bypassed / total if total else 0.0
def main():
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(add_help=True)
parser.add_argument("srcdir")
parser.add_argument("--header")
parser.add_argument("--detail", action="store_true")
parser.add_argument("--per-file", action="store_true")
parser.add_argument("--baseline")
parser.add_argument("--json", action="store_true")
args = parser.parse_args()
header = args.header or os.path.join(
os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))),
"include", "akstdlib.h")
if not os.path.isfile(header):
sys.stderr.write(f"error: no such header: {header}\n")
return 2
if not os.path.isdir(args.srcdir):
sys.stderr.write(f"error: no such directory: {args.srcdir}\n")
return 2
libc = wrapped_libc(header)
library, bypass, per_file = measure(args.srcdir, libc)
lib_total, raw_total = sum(library.values()), sum(bypass.values())
total = lib_total + raw_total
if args.json:
print(json.dumps({
"source": os.path.abspath(args.srcdir),
"header": os.path.abspath(header),
"wrapped_libc_names": len(libc),
"library_calls": lib_total,
"bypass_calls": raw_total,
"bypass_pct": round(rate(raw_total, total), 1),
"library_breakdown": dict(library.most_common()),
"bypass_breakdown": dict(bypass.most_common()),
"per_file": {k: {"library": v[0], "bypass": v[1]}
for k, v in per_file.items()},
}, indent=2))
return 0
print(f"consumer : {os.path.abspath(args.srcdir)}")
print(f"measured against: {os.path.abspath(header)} "
f"({len(libc)} wrapped libc names)")
print()
print(f"libakstdlib calls : {lib_total}")
print(f"bypassed to libc : {raw_total}")
print(f"bypass rate : {rate(raw_total, total):.1f}% "
f"({raw_total}/{total})")
if args.baseline:
try:
was_lib, was_raw = (int(part) for part in args.baseline.split("/"))
except ValueError:
sys.stderr.write("error: --baseline wants LIBRARY/BYPASS, "
"e.g. 10/119\n")
return 2
was_total = was_lib + was_raw
print()
print(f"baseline : {was_lib} / {was_raw} "
f"({rate(was_raw, was_total):.1f}% bypass)")
print(f"change : {lib_total - was_lib:+d} library, "
f"{raw_total - was_raw:+d} bypass, "
f"{rate(raw_total, total) - rate(was_raw, was_total):+.1f} pt")
print()
print("A bypass rate is only comparable between two counts of the same")
print("tree. If the consumer grew between them, compare the rate and")
print("not the totals -- and say which tree each number came from.")
if args.detail:
print("\nbypassed to libc")
for name, count in bypass.most_common():
print(f" {name:<22}{count}")
print("\ncalls into libakstdlib")
for name, count in library.most_common():
print(f" {name:<22}{count}")
if args.per_file:
print("\nper file (library, bypass), worst bypass first")
order = sorted(per_file.items(), key=lambda kv: (-kv[1][1], kv[0]))
for name, (lib, raw) in order:
print(f" {name:<32}{lib:>5}{raw:>6}")
return 0
if __name__ == "__main__":
sys.exit(main())