SyntaxAwareSearch (sas) is a grep-like tool with an understanding of the syntax of languages. sas uses a domain specific language to allow very concise but powerful queries of code.

The sas DSL has a few components:

• term: A special character used to match, e.g. a function or variable declaration
• operator: Expresses a relationship between terms
• data: Additional information constraing the type or name of a term

Each languages supported by sas may have additional language-specific features, however, the following terms and operators are supported:

• \F: Matches a function declaration
• \V: Matches a variable declaration
• \P: Matches a function parameter declaration
• \T: Matches a type declaration

Terms may also be constrained with = which requires that the matching item has a 'name' matching the given regular expression (the 'name' is dependent on the language and term). The type of the match can also be constrained with ~.

• >: The 'child' operator. The expression on the right occurs lexically within the one on the left
• <: The parent operator. The expression on the left occurs lexically within the one on the right
• |: The or operator. Matches the expression on the left or right

Given the following C++ program "demo.cpp":

class DemoClass {
public:
    void member_func() {}
};

int x;

float top_level(){
    float y;
    return 0.0;
}

The following expressions would give the provided results.