Fast and accurate syntax searching for C and C++

Published

2022-12-22 13:00

Collected

2026-07-03 04:02

---
id: 1715
title: "Fast and accurate syntax searching for C and C++"
source_domain: blog.trailofbits.com
source_url: "https://blog.trailofbits.com/2022/12/22/syntax-searching-c-c-clang-ast/"
published_at: "2022-12-22T13:00:52Z"
tags: ["research", "tooling", "program-analysis", "clang"]
phying_url: "https://phying.com/item/1715"
lang: en
---

# Fast and accurate syntax searching for C and C++

## Summary

Trail of Bits prototyped Syntex, a tool that searches C/C++ code by matching syntax patterns against indexed, macro-expanded Clang ASTs — avoiding the false negatives and missing semantics of regex- and plugin-parser-based search tools.

## Intelligence Metadata

- **Sources:** blog.trailofbits.com
- **Published:** 2022-12-22T13:00:52Z
- **Original:** https://blog.trailofbits.com/2022/12/22/syntax-searching-c-c-clang-ast/
- **Phying News:** https://phying.com/item/1715