How can i specify an area of code to instrument it by pintool?

Question

There are four levels of granularity in Pin: routine, instruction and image, trace. Can i specify an limits/area to start and stop inserting instrumentation code. may by like directive like ( # start instrumentation , # end instrumentation ) or some thing like that,

An example:
for( int i=0; i< x; i++) { #startInstrumentation for( ....;.....;.....) { // some code // function call, conditions , loops, .... } #endInstrumentation }
Is there are any way to do this ?

Answer 1

You can use trace-based instrumentation to do what you want. At the beginning of each trace, check its start address and if it is not in range of interest, avoid adding analysis functions and return immediately from the routine.

It's possible that a trace will begin outside a region of interest but end inside it, or the other way around. If this can happen, you will need to perform more fine grained choice about what to instrument. I would check if this is a real concern before investing an effort.

If you're interested in instrumenting specific routines or images, consider using filter.cpp from InstLib in the kit. An example for use can be found in InstLibExamples.

Now, as for how to target these regions of interest, you have several options. If you have no control over the target binary, you can specify the region in a command line parameter, as a pair of offsets into the image of interest.

If you have control of the binary, you can insert two symbols, that specify the start and end of the rgion of interest, and then iterate over image symbols using the SYM interface.