Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!spdcc!esegue!compilers-sender From: bart@videovax.tv.tek.com (Bart Massey) Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax) Keywords: C, debuf, design Message-ID: <6033@videovax.tv.tek.com> Date: 26 Aug 90 23:07:14 GMT References: <9008202341.AA06543@llama.ingres.com> <4032@rtifs1.UUCP> <3263@decuac.DEC.COM> Sender: compilers-sender@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us Reply-To: Bart Massey Organization: Tektronix TV Measurement Systems, Beaverton OR Lines: 24 Approved: compilers@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us In article <3263@decuac.DEC.COM> mjr@decuac.DEC.COM (Marcus J. Ranum) writes: ... > I can imagine building such capabilities into a pre-processor of some sort, > that did idiot checking based on some information about the kind of things > you wanted to do, but I don't think it belongs in the compiler (please!). ... I, on the other hand, am quite happy with the general direction GNU CC has taken, which is to provide a bunch of warnings for the kinds of suspect constructs discussed in the above-referenced articles (although nothing that clever, yet), but to require that the warnings be seperately and explicitly enabled with compile-time switches. Thus, I tend to use these things the way I use lint, which is to turn them on only when I really can't understand why some code is broken, and have been staring at it for hours. Often, GCC or lint will point out a legal but questionable line of code which will suddenly make the whole problem clear to me -- especially if I was trying to read someone else's code :-)... Bart Massey ..tektronix!videovax.tv.tek.com!bart ..tektronix!reed.bitnet!bart -- Send compilers articles to compilers@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us {ima | spdcc | world}!esegue. Meta-mail to compilers-request@esegue.