Find unused methods, bitrot

[breznak]

By using IDE, or some tool - https://github.com/caolanm/callcatcher
..and remove them

[D-McDougall]

We should remove the files:

• src/nupic/os/Regex.cpp
• src/nupic/os/Regex.hpp
• src/test/unit/os/RegexTest.cpp

It contains a single function "match".
Its not used:

$ grep -inrE "include.*regex" ./src/
src/test/unit/os/RegexTest.cpp:28:#include <nupic/os/Regex.hpp>
src/nupic/os/Regex.cpp:26:#include <nupic/os/Regex.hpp>
src/nupic/os/Regex.cpp:30:#include <regex>
src/nupic/os/Regex.cpp:33:#include <regex.h>
src/nupic/ntypes/Sdr.hpp:35:#include <regex>
    ^^^ This is the real regex, from c++11 stdlib  ^^^
src/nupic/engine/Region.cpp:32:#include <regex>

$ grep "match\|regex" src/nupic/engine/Region.cpp
#include <regex>
End of grep output, Region.cpp includes but does not use regex ...

[D-McDougall]

I think we should remove the method:

Synapse Connections::minPermanenceSynapse_(Segment segment) const

It's private by the underscore naming convention although technically protected.
It's unused and has no unit tests:

grep -rn minPermanenceSynapse_ ../../src/
../../src/nupic/algorithms/Connections.cpp:357:Synapse Connections::minPermanenceSynapse_(Segment segment) const {
../../src/nupic/algorithms/Connections.hpp:539:  Synapse minPermanenceSynapse_(Segment segment) const;

[D-McDougall]

I've noticed several methods by the name printState.

• They appear to be unused
• They appear to identical
• They have the comment "Debugging helper"
• They do not interact with the classes which they're part of.

printState is a function which pretty prints a vector. Maybe this function can be moved to the file "/nupic/utils/vector_helpers"?

[dkeeney]

I assume you are looking at BacktrackingTM?
Those were in the python code that I ported. I think they should be kept because they are useful in debugging any problems with BacktrackingTM. If you want do that function using something in vector_helpers that would be fine too.

[D-McDougall]

I assume you are looking at BacktrackingTM?

Oops I didn't look there...

printState is in:

• SpatialPooler
• TemporalMemory
• BacktrackingTM
• Cells4

Of these 4 instances, SpatialPooler & TemporalMemory have the same very simple code, which I suggest moving to "utils/vector_helpers.hpp"

BacktrackingTM and Cells4 have actually useful implementations which are specific to their class. I agree that we should keep these as they are.

[dkeeney]

After PR #196 is merged there will not be any need for types/Types.h as a separate file. I would like to merge Types.h into Types.hpp. Types.h is still included in a few places but they are all C++ code and can use Types.hpp instead.

[D-McDougall]

We should delete file: src/nupic/algorithms/Scanning.hpp
Contains single unused function computeAlpha
With the comment: // Performs the time-intensive steps of ScanControlNode.getAlpha
The word ScanControlNode does not appear in this repo aside from this comment.
The copyright is from 2013.

[D-McDougall]

src/nupic/algorithms/BitHistory.hpp and
src/nupic/algorithms/BitHistory.cpp
Appear to be unused.