Re: A lesson for compiler warning writers

  mcdaniel@adi.com (Tim McDaniel) writes:


      Garrett.Wollman@UVM.EDU (Garrett Wollman) writes
      > For that matter, if only other compiler vendors could take the lesson
      > from GCC and emit helpful, user-controllable diagnostics.


      Another choice, and much easier, is to use a good lint program.


That's not really a "much easier [...] choice". Lint programs tend to run
quite slowly. That means that either your edit-compile-test cycle will
become much slower, or that you won't run lint on every compilation.


Having a good lint is better than nothing at all, but it is much more
convenient if the compiler performs the same function on every
compilation.


Thomas.


PS: The need for compiler warnings is usually an indication for a design
flaw in the language. For example, implicit conversions between numeric
types in C (integer, float, double) are very likely causes of obscure bugs
in numerical code. They should be eliminated from the language.
Unfortunately, for reasons of backwards compatibility, the best a compiler
can do is to warn about them.
[Ooh, there's flame bait in that PS. But do lint programs really run slowly?
Seems to me they're basically stripped down compilers, they should be
fairly quick. -John]
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