How to find all global variables in C++ source code, DLL or any file created by the VC++ compiler?

Question

I'm making my application thread-safe. One of the steps is to synchronize access or eliminate usages of global variables. I'm using Visual Studio. I can't find any good way to find all global variables in my codebase. It's impossible to create a good text search pattern and I can't find any helpful tool. Do you guys know any good way to do that? It could be a source code analysis tool or a binary file analyzer.

Answer 1

This could help:

1. Open the project in visual studio.
2. Open 'Class View' of the project
3. Under the project title, you will find 'Global Functions and Variable'.

I have checked this with Visual Studio 2010 and above.

Edit: As suggested by Ajay in comments, you could also categorize items in groups. For grouping items:

1. In class view, right click on project title
2. Select `Group By Object/Member Type'
3. Select the required tree like variables or structures or enums etc.

Answer 2

One option might be letting the linker generate a map file (/MAP in Visual Studio).

You will get a .map file for each binary with two sections:

A table of segments

 Start         Length     Name                   Class  0001:00000000 00010000H .textbss                DATA  0002:00000000 000034b4H .text                   CODE  0003:00000000 00000104H .CRT$XCA                DATA  0003:00000104 00000104H .CRT$XCAA               DATA  0003:00000208 00000104H .CRT$XCZ                DATA  0003:0000030c 00000104H .CRT$XIA                DATA  ... 

A list of symbols (functions and data)

  Address         Publics by Value              Rva+Base       Lib:Object   0000:00000000       ___safe_se_handler_count   00000000     <absolute>  0000:00000000       ___safe_se_handler_table   00000000     <absolute>  0000:00000000       ___ImageBase               00400000     <linker-defined>  0001:00000000       __enc$textbss$begin        00401000     <linker-defined>  0001:00010000       __enc$textbss$end          00411000     <linker-defined>  0002:000003a0       _wmain                     004113a0 f   console4.obj  ... 

You can tell apart the functions from variables by the "CODE" / "DATA" designaiton in the segment list.

Advantage: You will get all symbols, even those in libraries, that were not removed by the Linker.

Disadvanatge: You will get all symbols, even those in libraries, that were not removed by the Linker. I don't know of any tool that does the code/data separation automatically.