Feature: Query via typed AST

[sambacha]

AST Query

TLDR: Provide an AST pattern, and see details about when that pattern was introduced.

Overview

This enables a much easier way to understand how or why a pattern was introduced. For instance, you can answer questions such as:

• Which devs are using solmate, and which are using open-zeppelin?
• Chronologically, when has each package been used? Do we see a shift over time?

To query the codebase to search for such a pattern, we can specify an AST selector as it would be accepted by Forge Lint.

AST selector is supported on AST Explorer for solidity.

For instance, to search for console.log() calls in javascript, the ESLint selector would be

"CallExpression[callee.object.name=console][callee.property.name=log]"

Other use cases

This could be used to help automate refactoring, finding regressions, and more since the debugger is based on a typed AST.

References

see ref. implementation for ESLint, https://github.com/NickHeiner/query-pattern-age/tree/use-in-tv#query-pattern-age

[cd1m0]

Is this report meant to be subimtted to the solc-typed-ast repo?

[sambacha]

Is this report meant to be subimtted to the solc-typed-ast repo?

Imma be real with you i opened this issue as a way to reference the idea - bookmark it for myself

[sambacha]

Really why not just go to yul ir that would be better

[cd1m0]

Could you provide more context about what you mean by "going to yul ir" in the context of the solidity debugger?