Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Funny mistake
Message-ID: <1991Mar22.172225.26408@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1991 17:22:25 GMT
References: <1991Mar16.195153.15509@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <15490@smoke.brl.mil> <1891@array.UUCP> <1991Mar21.021504.25553@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Mar21.021504.25553@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> gsh7w@astsun8.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Hennessy) writes:
>2) Experiance has shown that having lint seperate from the compiler
>means that many people would not use it.

More to the point, with the (important) exception of intermodule consistency
checking, the notion that doing lintish checking in the compiler costs a lot
extra is a *myth*.  The compiler already has almost all the information it
needs to do most of lint's checks; it merely needs to pay attention to what
it already knows.  There needs to be a way to shut it up, since suspicious-
looking constructs are sometimes legitimate, but there's just no good reason
why a compiler shouldn't do most of that checking routinely.
-- 
"[Some people] positively *wish* to     | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
believe ill of the modern world."-R.Peto|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry