Functions in C and C++¶

You can use CodeQL to explore functions in C and C++ code.

Overview¶

The standard CodeQL library for C and C++ represents functions using the Function class (see CodeQL libraries for C and C++).

The example queries in this topic explore some of the most useful library predicates for querying functions.

Finding all static functions¶

Using the member predicate Function.isStatic() we can list all the static functions in a database:

import cpp

from Function f
where f.isStatic()
select f, "This is a static function."

This query is very general, so there are probably too many results to be interesting for most nontrivial projects.

Finding functions that are not called¶

It might be more interesting to find functions that are not called, using the standard CodeQL FunctionCall class from the abstract syntax tree category (see CodeQL libraries for C and C++). The FunctionCall class can be used to identify places where a function is actually used, and it is related to Function through the FunctionCall.getTarget() predicate.

import cpp

from Function f
where not exists(FunctionCall fc | fc.getTarget() = f)
select f, "This function is never called."

The new query finds functions that are not the target of any FunctionCall—in other words, functions that are never called. You may be surprised by how many results the query finds. However, if you examine the results, you can see that many of the functions it finds are used indirectly. To create a query that finds only unused functions, we need to refine the query and exclude other ways of using a function.

Excluding functions that are referenced with a function pointer¶

You can modify the query to remove functions where a function pointer is used to reference the function:

import cpp

from Function f
where not exists(FunctionCall fc | fc.getTarget() = f)
  and not exists(FunctionAccess fa | fa.getTarget() = f)
select f, "This function is never called, or referenced with a function pointer."

This query returns fewer results. However, if you examine the results then you can probably still find potential refinements.

For example, there is a more complicated standard query, Unused static function, that finds unused static functions.

You can explore the definition of an element in the standard libraries and see what predicates are available. Right-click the element to display the context menu, and click Go to Definition. The library file is opened in a new tab with the definition of the element highlighted.

Finding a specific function¶

This query uses Function and FunctionCall to find calls to the function sprintf that have a variable format string—which is potentially a security hazard.

import cpp

from FunctionCall fc
where fc.getTarget().getQualifiedName() = "sprintf"
  and not fc.getArgument(1) instanceof StringLiteral
select fc, "sprintf called with variable format string."

This uses:

Declaration.getQualifiedName() to identify calls to the specific function sprintf.
FunctionCall.getArgument(1) to fetch the format string argument.

Note that we could have used Declaration.getName(), but Declaration.getQualifiedName() is a better choice because it includes the namespace. For example: getName() would return vector where getQualifiedName would return std::vector.

The published version of this query is considerably more complicated, but if you look carefully you will find that its structure is the same. See Non-constant format string.