Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!dftsrv!mimsy!kilroy@mimsy.umd.edu
From: kilroy@mimsy.umd.edu (Nancy's Sweetie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Discarded Function Values (To Cast or Not to Cast)
Summary: I have better things to do than work on sloppy programs.
Keywords: lint, shutting up, casts, `GROWF!'
Message-ID: <20882@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 22 Nov 89 18:10:17 GMT
References: <316@voa3.UUCP> <1989Nov17.154621.2698@aqdata.uucp> <1989Nov18.062322.12728@twwells.com> <11644@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1989Nov19.171815.17445@twwells.com>
Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu
Reply-To: kilroy@mimsy.umd.edu (Nancy's Sweetie)
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 49
Disclaimer: Brandy the WonderDog knows I don't speak for UMD.


In article <11644@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
> I find that I am less likely to overlook genuine problems reported by
> "lint" if NO lint output is expected than if SOME lint output is expected.
> This is difficult to enforce  when malloc() is involved, although there
> are ways.

With which I totally agree:  shut up lint.  Completely.

In article <1989Nov19.171815.17445@twwells.com> bill@twwells.com
(T. William Wells) writes:
>
>I've found that completely shutting up lint is not worth my time.
>Not that it is impossible, but I have better things to do.

and

>Anyway, my approach to this is to shut lint up on anything where
>I might be confused by its output, and ignore the rest.

Which irritates me more than I can express.  (Though I'll try anyway.  8-)

At the NIH Department of Nuclear Medicine, I have to support a program which
does real-time data aquisition.  The original version of this program, I am
told, `produced little output from lint.'

It has since been modified 32 times.  Each person who touched it made a
little change here, a little change there, and never bothered to make sure
they didn't add to the lint output.

When I got this thing, I looked at it for a while, and then ran lint on it.

I got back 851 lines of output, some of which said things like `67 lines
deleted for lack of space.'

Now, you may feel that you have better things to do, and you may feel that
*you* are not confused by some of the messages.  But if you don't care to
put *hard work* into making your programs maintainable for the next guy who
comes along, then why are you even bothering to write programs?

I also have things to do besides spend a half hour ensuring that a program
that works has all the lint-shutter-uppers in it.  But a little hard work
never killed anybody, especially if it can help the next person in line.
Nobody will ever get *any* lines of output running lint on a program I've
written, let alone ~800.


kilroy@cs.umd.edu          Darren F. Provine          ...uunet!mimsy!kilroy
"If everybody gives a little, everybody gets a lot." -- Pete Cottrell