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From: wsmith@mdbs.UUCP (Bill Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: machine generated code and chatty compilers
Summary: it's not that easy
Message-ID: <1477@mdbs.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 90 20:21:06 GMT
References: <1471@mdbs.UUCP> <923@thor.wright.EDU>
Organization: MDBS Inc., Lafayette, IN
Lines: 23

In article <923@thor.wright.EDU>, econrad@thor.wright.edu (Eric Conrad) writes:
> From article <1471@mdbs.UUCP>, by wsmith@mdbs.UUCP (Bill Smith):
> > For those helpful souls that wish their C or C++ compiler to generate
> > helpful warning messages in contexts that are technically correct, I 
> > have another argument that that is inherently a bad idea.
> 
> So turn the warning suppression flag on for automatic-generated code.

On the surface this sounds like a good idea, but the command to turn
of the warnings (when done with a much care as is deserved) will be
incredible complicated to use.

How do you decide which subset of the warning messages to suppress?

To suppress all warnings may hide useful and pertinent warning but
different programming groups may all have mutually disjoint definitions
of "pertinent warnings."

Lint suffers from this effect too.  You can't tweak it to omit just the set
of errors that you don't care to see.

Bill Smith
pur-ee!mdbs!wsmith