nameCollector

A tool for collecting all user-defined identifier names from a source code file.

Works for C, C++, C#, Java, and Python

Input: A srcML file of source code with --position option. srcML file can be a single unit (one source code file) or an archive (multiple source code files).

Output: A list of identifier names, their type (for declartions and functions), their syntactic category, the file name, and position (line:column) the identifier occurs (declared), the programming langauge, and for methods and classes their stereotype, from stereocode, if it is in the srcML. Output is plain text (default) or csv (with no header).

Example:

Name	Type	Category	File	Position	Language	Stereotype
foo	char	function	foo.cpp	10:5	C++	get
x	double	parameter	foo.cpp	10:15	C++
i	int	local	foo.cpp	12:10	C++
stack		class	foo.cpp	15:7	C++	small-class

Identifier Syntactic Categories Supported C, C++, C#, Java, Python:

Category	Description
function	Function name
constructor	Constructor name
destructor	Destructor name
class	Class name
interface	Interface name in C#, Java
typedef	Typedef name
struct	Struct name
union	Union name in C, C++
enum	Enum name
field	Name of a class/struct/union/enum field
label	Name of a label (as in goto)
local	Local variable name (in a function)
global	Global variable name
macro	Macro name in C, C++
namespace	User defined namespace in C++, C#, Python (import aliases)
parameter	Name of a parameter
function-parameter	Name of a parameter, that is a function
template-parameter	Name of a template parameter
property	Property name in C#
event	Event name in C#
annotation	Name of an annotation in Java

Python notes:

In Python, globals, locals, and fields are collected at their first appearance. If a name is assigned to twice within a scope, only the first use of that name will be collected.
Additionally, type information is NOT collected for any Python variables or functions.

To build:

• Need libxml2 installed
• Need srcML V1.1.0 installed
• Need srcSAX built and installed

cmake . -B build

cd build

make

To run test suite:

ctest -V

To run individual test:

ctest -R test_cpp_function -V

The results of the tests are in /Testing the build directory, from here you can access the LastTest.log and LastTestsFailed.log files to view the test results.

To run:

Generate the srcML for the given source code file using the --position option. Then run nameCollector.

srcml foo.cpp --position -o foo.cpp.xml

./nameCollector -i foo.cpp.xml --csv -o results.csv

./nameCollector --help

Output is plain text by default. Use -f csv or --csv for comma separated output. An output file can be specified with -o option. Takes standard input by default, and an input file can be specified with -i. The --append option will append output to an existing file rather than overwrite the file.

Developer Notes:

The initial version of the application was developed by Decker from the srcSAX examples in June 2023. This was extended to collect the different types of names by Maletic. Maletic added the CLI11 interface and made the first public release (July 2023). Testa added testing framework and testsuite in summer 2025. Behler added support for Python alongside the 1.1.0 release of srcML (August 2025).

nameCollector is a good simple example of how to use srcSAX to build fast and scalable tools for collecting analysis information.

Developers of nameCollector:

• Joshua Behler
• Michael Collard
• Michael Decker
• Jonathan Maletic
• Sophia Testa