clang-tidy - readability-suspicious-call-argument — Extra Clang Tools 21.1.8 documentation

# Extra Clang Tools 21.1.8 documentation

## clang-tidy - readability-suspicious-call-argument

# readability-suspicious-call-argument

Finds function calls where the arguments passed are provided out of order, based on the difference between the argument name and the parameter names of the function.

Given a function call `f(foo, bar);` and a function signature `void f(T tvar, U uvar)`, the arguments `foo` and `bar` are swapped if `foo` (the argument name) is more similar to `uvar` (the other parameter) than `tvar` (the parameter it is currently passed to) and `bar` is more similar to `tvar` than `uvar`.

Warnings might indicate either that the arguments are swapped, or that the names’ cross-similarity might hinder code comprehension.

## Heuristics

The following heuristics are implemented in the check. If any of the enabled heuristics deem the arguments to be provided out of order, a warning will be issued.

The heuristics themselves are implemented by considering pairs of strings, and are symmetric, so in the following there is no distinction on which string is the argument name and which string is the parameter name.

### Equality

The most trivial heuristic, which compares the two strings for case-insensitive equality.

### Abbreviation

Common abbreviations can be specified which will deem the strings similar if the abbreviated and the abbreviation stand together. For example, if `src` is registered as an abbreviation for `source`, then the following code example will be warned about.

    void foo(int source, int x);

    foo(b, src);

The abbreviations to recognise can be configured with the Abbreviations check option. This heuristic is case-insensitive.

### Prefix

The prefix heuristic reports if one of the strings is a sufficiently long prefix of the other string, e.g. `target` to `targetPtr`. The similarity percentage is the length ratio of the prefix to the longer string, in the previous example, it would be 6 / 9 = 66.66…%.

This heuristic can be configured with bounds. The default bounds are: below 25% dissimilar and above 30% similar. This heuristic is case-insensitive.

### Suffix

Analogous to the Prefix heuristic. In the case of `oldValue` and `value` compared, the similarity percentage is 8 / 5 = 62.5%.

This heuristic can be configured with bounds. The default bounds are: below 25% dissimilar and above 30% similar. This heuristic is case-insensitive.

### Substring

The substring heuristic combines the prefix and the suffix heuristic, and tries to find the longest common substring in the two strings provided. The similarity percentage is the ratio of the found longest common substring against the longer of the two input strings. For example, given `val` and `rvalue`, the similarity is 3 / 6 = 50%. If no characters are common in the two string, 0%.

This heuristic can be configured with bounds. The default bounds are: below 40% dissimilar and above 50% similar. This heuristic is case-insensitive.

### Levenshtein distance (as Levenshtein)

The Levenshtein distance describes how many single-character changes (additions, changes, or removals) must be applied to transform one string into another.

The Levenshtein distance is translated into a similarity percentage by dividing it with the length of the longer string, and taking its complement with regards to 100%. For example, given `something` and `anything`, the distance is 4 edits, and the similarity percentage is 100% - 4 / 9 = 55.55…%.

This heuristic can be configured with bounds. The default bounds are: below 50% dissimilar and above 66% similar. This heuristic is case-sensitive.

### Jaro–Winkler distance (as JaroWinkler)

The Jaro–Winkler distance is an edit distance like the Levenshtein distance. It is calculated from the amount of common characters that are sufficiently close to each other in position, and to-be-changed characters. The original definition of Jaro has been extended by Winkler to weigh prefix similarities more. The similarity percentage is expressed as an average of the common and non-common characters against the length of both strings.

This heuristic can be configured with bounds. The default bounds are: below 75% dissimilar and above 85% similar. This heuristic is case-insensitive.

### Sørensen–Dice coefficient (as Dice)

The Sørensen–Dice coefficient was originally defined to measure the similarity of two sets. Formally, the coefficient is calculated by dividing 2 * #(intersection) with #(set1) + #(set2), where #() is the cardinality function of sets. This metric is applied to strings by creating bigrams (substring sequences of length 2) of the two strings and using the set of bigrams for the two strings as the two sets.

This heuristic can be configured with bounds. The default bounds are: below 60% dissimilar and above 70% similar. This heuristic is case-insensitive.

## Options

MinimumIdentifierNameLength

  Sets the minimum required length the argument and parameter names need to have. Names shorter than this length will be ignored. Defaults to 3.

Abbreviations

  For the Abbreviation heuristic (see here), this option configures the abbreviations in the “abbreviation=abbreviated_value” format. The option is a string, with each value joined by “;”.

  By default, the following abbreviations are set:

  > - addr=address

  > - arr=array

  > - attr=attribute

  > - buf=buffer

  > - cl=client

  > - cnt=count

  > - col=column

  > - cpy=copy

  > - dest=destination

  > - dist=distance

  > - dst=distance

  > - elem=element

  > - hght=height

  > - i=index

  > - idx=index

  > - len=length

  > - ln=line

  > - lst=list

  > - nr=number

  > - num=number

  > - pos=position

  > - ptr=pointer

  > - ref=reference

  > - src=source

  > - srv=server

  > - stmt=statement

  > - str=string

  > - val=value

  > - var=variable

  > - vec=vector

  > - wdth=width

The configuration options for each implemented heuristic (see above) is constructed dynamically. In the following, <HeuristicName> refers to one of the keys from the heuristics implemented.

<HeuristicName>

  True or False, whether a particular heuristic, such as Equality or Levenshtein is enabled.

  Defaults to True for every heuristic.

<HeuristicName>DissimilarBelow, <HeuristicName>SimilarAbove

  A value between 0 and 100, expressing a percentage. The bounds set what percentage of similarity the heuristic must deduce for the two identifiers to be considered similar or dissimilar by the check.

  Given arguments `arg1` and `arg2` passed to `param1` and `param2`, respectively, the bounds check is performed in the following way: If the similarity of the currently passed argument order (`arg1` to `param1`) is below the DissimilarBelow threshold, and the similarity of the suggested swapped order (`arg1` to `param2`) is above the SimilarAbove threshold, the swap is reported.

  For the defaults of each heuristic, see above.

## Name synthesis

When comparing the argument names and parameter names, the following logic is used to gather the names for comparison:

Parameter names are the identifiers as written in the source code.

Argument names are:

> - If a variable is passed, the variable’s name.

> - If a subsequent function call’s return value is used as argument, the called function’s name.

> - Otherwise, empty string.

Empty argument or parameter names are ignored by the heuristics.